In The Beginning
by S-Jay494
Summary: As Mary Winchester counts her final breaths, the Winchesters are forced to face life without her. Or will they? Could the supernatural hold the key to her survival? [Sequel to "In The Woods" and "In the Wind". Third in the AU series; features: Sam, Dean, John, Mary Winchester, and Bobby Singer].
1. Chapter 1

**_Note_** : _Here it is, the long overdue installment 3 of this AU series. Sorry for the long hiatus; I had a novel to finish editing and then to publicize. So, I return to you with the latest in the ongoing tale of the Winchester clan (sorry, no time for editing so apologies for the typos). For those new to the series, it begins with "In the Wind" and rolls on from there. Reading that one first and its sequel "In The Woods" will add the necessary context to understand what is going on in this story. Cheers, my dear readers. I have missed you all. Hope you enjoy this one._

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _Lawrence, Kansas_**

 ** _March 1983_**

Mary Winchester clenched her fists before grabbing a pillow from the couch. She buried her face in it and muffled a frustrated scream. The sound of the family's car, an old Impala that her husband refused to consider selling for something that got better mileage and might save them some money each week, rumbled in the driveway then faded as the car took off into the rainy night. The thunder that shook the house earlier was a memory unfortunately. It had been a good cover for their shouting as they fell into yet another argument about money.

Things were tight and tough. The garage was struggling, bills were rising, and in two months' time the small Winchester family would go from three to four members when the new baby arrived. While the argument had started about finances, it ended when John put his foot in his mouth and made an ill-timed dig at his wife about her nagging being hormonal.

She made him regret that rather quickly.

Mary Campbell Winchester might be heavily pregnant and smaller framed than her former-Marine spouse, but she was anything but meek. She wondered in those moments when her temper flared and she saw nothing but red what he would do if she showed him what she knew about taking care of herself.

But those moments usually faded swiftly leaving her feeling dismal for even contemplating unearthing the twisted secrets of her youth and the vicious and deadly life her family led hunting the nasty and fanged creatures that stalked humanity both at night and in broad daylight. Given that as her alternative, an argument with her husband over the checkbook hardly seemed a reason to be upset, but she found herself venting her frustration into the pillow all the same.

She was so wrapped up in that moment that she had not heard the sound of little feet descending the stairs after having slipped out of his bed. It wasn't until her young son Dean was beside her that she noticed him.

"Mommy, why are you crying?" Dean asked in a soft and worried voice as he pawed his way onto the couch.

"Dean, honey," Mary said, drying her eyes hastily. "What are you doing up?"

"I heard a bang," he said with his wide green eyes alert and concerned. "Did the house break? I heard the wind. Is there a tomato?"

Mary smirked.

"You mean tornado," she sniffled as she kindly corrected him and started to weave yet another tale to keep him for knowing his parents were fighting. She felt she needed to do this to remove the worry from his delicate features. "No, honey. It's not that kind of storm. The house didn't break. You just heard the door. The, uh, the wind shut it really hard. Everything's okay, Sweetie. Let's get you back in bed."

He shook his head as he knelt on the cushion beside her.

"Where's Daddy?" he asked with a touch of fear as he looked around only to find his father absent from the room. "He wasn't home when I went to bed. He didn't say Goodnight."

"Well, Daddy got home late, after you went to bed," Mary replied truthfully then lied smoothly. "Then he had to go back to work."

"'Cause someone gots a sick car he needs to make better?" the child asked.

Mary's grin melted from the forced mask into a genuine smile. Dean had recently decided his father was some kind of hero. He had always been an unrepentant fan of John's, but now that John was spending a bit more time with the child to help ease the transition for when the new baby arrived, Dean's fascination with and attachment to the man had skyrocketed. Therefore, when John explained to his son that his job was to fix cars, the boy equated that skill with those of a doctor or a superhero saving people. In recent weeks, he had started asking if their car was actually the Batmobile; Mary could only assume that his next questions in the coming weeks would be whether John was actually Batman.

Mary smirked inwardly at that. Her husband had been a Marine, and a good one at that, but a man who battled dark forces in the shadows just wasn't a role she could see for him. Her father had known that much about the mechanic; it had been the only thing Samuel Campbell got right in his assessment of the man who became his son-in-law (even if it was only after the man died).

Still, Mary wasn't going to dissuade Dean's worship rationale for his father. It was a child's response to a change in his world he could not understand. John was spending time away from home lately. Usually it was to work longer shifts to help pay the bills; however, there were also the nights that Mary and John tangled with nasty words and frustrated emotions, which usually prompted John to sleep on the couch or (like this night) to leave the house entirely. The fights were getting louder and seemed unending on some days. It was as if they had forgotten why they ever fell in love in the first place. Just about the only thing the Winchesters agreed on was that it would be better to spare Dean as much of their discontent as possible. Therefore, for her part, if in Dean's mind his father would only leave to do something of vital importance, such as saved the lives of cars, then that was what Mary would let him believe.

Then again, once in a while, their child was more aware than either parent realized.

Like this evening for example.

"Was Daddy mad again?" Dean asked fearfully. "Did I leave my toys in the way again? Is that why you're crying? ''Cause I did something that made Daddy go away again?"

Mary pulled her little boy into a hug and pet his soft hair. It always disturbed her how often she and John would forget Dean was in the house when they got to the point of yelling at each other. The garage was struggling and money was tight, and now there was another baby on the way. Granted, it would be months before the newest family member arrived, but everything lately was a strain on finances and their relationship.

"No, Sweetheart," Mary said simply. "Daddy's not made at you. You didn't make him go away. He had to work. Mommy's only crying because she's feeling a little blue."

Dean's eyes lit up and a curious yet clever expression washed over his pale, freckled face.

"Oh, okay," he replied eagerly then scrambled away from her swiftly.

Mary was surprised at the abrupt reaction. Dean's typical response to any offering from Mary—good, bad or indifferent—was usually to hug her then grin in his impish way as if they shared some inside joke. He was a sensitive, warm and affectionate little boy who had a habit of wheedling his way out of trouble simply by turning on an impish charm that left her usually grinning at him rather than scolding him.

So, leaving her side so suddenly without seeking some sort of comfort or validation in the form of a hug was out of character for him. His departure seemed cold, especially since her little boy knew she had been crying. Dean did not handle his Mommy's tears well; he always seemed to fear they were his fault and would throw his tiny arms around her neck and hug her tightly as if he could squeeze the sadness from her. Before she had time to wonder further why her son had turned abruptly disinterested, the boy returned with a yellow crayon held high in his small fist.

"Here," Dean said, thrusting the brightly color stick in her face, his grin crinkling his eyes. "You can have this."

"What's this for?" she asked curiously.

"It's so you don't need to be blue no more," Dean offered with a bright but sleepy grin. "Yellow won't make you cry, Mommy. See, I made it all better now."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _Sioux Falls, SD_**

 ** _June 1995_**

Yellow.

Mary opened her eyes and focused on the pale sunny shaded blooms in the vase by her bed as a long forgotten memory of a crayon offered to soothe a broken heart began to fade from her mind. She looked at the flowers by her bed. The blooms were drooping now, dropping petals as they wilted into a sorry state nearly a week after arriving. They were a birthday gift, courtesy of her sons. The buttery wildflowers plucked from the meadow beside their home were much lighter than a crayon but still brought her mind back to sunnier and earlier times.

Or maybe that was the medication.

Mary was never sure anymore. Days were hazy and seemed to drag agonizingly or simply disappear, depending on how much the pain invaded her mind. The desire for someone to just up the dose of the morphine was strong, but the idea of leaving her boys scared her more than the pain.

The cancer was already at stage four when the doctor's diagnosed her late the fall, just after Thanksgiving. What had started as a dull pain in her chest that she thought was a mixture of anxiety and a pulled muscle turned out to be something deadly.

It had been a trying year for the entire family even without her illness. Sam struggled at the hands (and fists) of a school bully during the first few weeks of the school year. Not surprisingly, Dean stepped in and put an end to it, but not before getting school officials involved and the law. Fortunately, his one close friend from school was the son of the County Sheriff. He had kept the matter from escalating, but not before there were a lot of tense moments and meetings with the Winchester parents. No sooner had that issue resolved itself than Dean found himself popular with the high school principal—namely for fighting in school with the older brother of the boy who had been bothering Sam. That resulted in a one week suspension. Upon his return after the punishment, the Winchesters were summoned to the school again. This time it was for Dean's unpermitted absence from school for cutting classes. What he had been doing during those missing hours remained a mystery to his parents, but John still suspected their neighbor Bobby Singer knew but was keeping a secret for Dean.

Thanksgiving rolled around with Mary feeling worse, which didn't get better once she knew why. The holiday was a quiet and miserable affair in the former church turned family home that year. Mary and John were trying to hold themselves together as they came to terms with her diagnosis. Sam was pouting that everyone in school thought he was a baby because his older brother had stepped in like a bodyguard, and Dean appeared mad at the world since he was on lockdown needing prior approval for his every move outside of their home and often receiving a chaperone anytime he did leave.

But once the news of her illness was broken to the boys, everything changed. Things had gone quiet and still in the house. John growled orders at his sons to help around the house. When Mary took to her bed, possibly for the rest of her days, in May, each stepped in to play nurse as much as they were capable.

Mary's days, whether they languished in pain or disappeared into an unconscious blur, were growing short. The hospice nurse was at the house most of the day, whenever John or Bobby could not be around. Mary had only two requests for her final days: That she spend them in her home rather than the hospital and that she never be alone in the house with her children. She knew she would die soon and did not want either of her sons to be the one to find her when she did pass. She blinked back her worry over that happening as she let her eyes settle on two pain-filled glassy, green orbs staring back at her. The sharp ache she spied there made her physical pain seem like nothing, and it crushed her heart into a tiny, cold ball to see it. Dark circles scarred the pockets under his eyes and his face was drawn and pale. His brother and father wore matching expressions anytime they were in the room with her.

She looked up from her yellow flowers to see Dean by her beside.

"Morning, Mom," he said softly. His voice, as it always was with her lately, was a combination of phony control and forced casualness.

"Sweetie," Mary said weakly. "What time is it?"

"About 7:30," he said. "Sam just finished his breakfast. He'll be in to say hi just before he goes to meet his bus. Do you need anything?"

"For you to go to school," Mary commanded as best as she could.

"It can wait," Dean said. "Besides, it's exam week. I'll get the same grades for the year whether I take any of them or not."

"Baby, don't do this," Mary sighed. "I want you to listen to me."

Her chest heaved as she deflated tiredly in the bed. Dean stood patiently waiting for her eyes to open again as she worked her jaw in an attempt to continue speaking. If it took her hours to get out another word, he would remain in place without flinching or sighing. Class schedules didn't matter; detention for being late again didn't matter either; hell, school as a whole just didn't matter to him. Never had and that wasn't changing. Particularly now.

What did matter was time—his mother's time, or more precisely, her time with them. With him.

There was so very little of it left.

Sure, he told Sam that the doctors were still doing their best and that Mom was a fighter. He said those things, nice little lies to keep the kid from falling apart, but Dean never believed them. He hadn't believed even when they were first told their mother was sick and that the doctor was doing everything he could to cure her. Dean had known before his parents said anything that something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut. There was a colder chill in the air, a darker shade to the night, a deeper moan to the wintery winds.

They broke the news two days after Christmas, as if that wasn't going to somehow ruin the feeling of the season. Dean tried not to be mad about that; he understood why they did it. It was for Sam. He was still a kid, and he needed to be protected from the bad stuff that lurked in the shadows and that could jump you when you weren't looking.

That's what cancer did.

It snuck up from the shadows and blindsided a person. It dragged his mother down and beating her senseless from the inside. Dean hated cancer; he hadn't thought much about hate or killing anything in his life, not seriously anyway (except maybe that thing that chased him and Sam in the woods the previous summer and nearly killed Bobby), but when he heard the words "stage four cancer" and his mother's name in the same sentence (words that came from her own mouth), he wanted blood.

Cancer was a living thing. He'd read that—the only time he had willingly looked up something in a book that wasn't part of a homework assignment or have anything to do with a car. He had read a lot about cancer since hearing those words. Cancer was a living thing, a bunch of cells, that grew rapidly and without regard for the body hosting them. They killed their hosts like the most vicious and uninvited guests in the universe.

And Dean wanted them dead. Every last cell. Everywhere.

But he couldn't kill them. It seemed, for his mother anyway, nothing could.

So all he could do was watch as it ate her alive from the inside. He watched her struggle. He watched her suffer, and (soon he knew—within a few weeks or perhaps sooner) he would watch her die. She would leave him, this time for good.

But for now, he watched, and he waited for her words. She swallowed slowly and dryly as her eyes focused on his, then hers crinkled slightly in the corners, the way they had in his earliest memories and the way they had up until just after Christmas. The return of that, a little smile in her eyes, swelled a lump in his throat as he took her hand and crouched beside the bed, leaning close to hear her soft voice.

"Sorry," Mary eventually said as her eyes peeked open once more.

"Sleeping in again, huh?" Dean chided lightly as he did what he could to put some confidence and charming arrogance into his tone. "You're becoming a bad example for me, Mom. I'm gonna start to think this is how adults behave then I'll never make it to school on time. Actually, that's probably a good idea. Every year I get stuck with an earlier period for history with Mr. Phelps. No good ever comes of me showing up in that man's class."

Mary scoffed thinly as she pursed her lips in a mild scolding. Her bony, dry hand squeezed his slightly as she looked into his soft green eyes and watched as he held back the hint of tears she spotted there so often—tiny glistening drops of heartbreak that were her fault but that he would never allow to see the light of day, torturing himself silently as he donned a mask of callous teenage arrogance that was so very far from who he truly was on the inside.

"You will go to your history exam today and do your best," she said finally as whatever she had intended to say slipped from her mind as a more pressing matter rose there. "Baby, you need to promise me something."

Talking was hard most days. Drawing enough breath to get out the words was a chore she did not feel up for most of the time. Adding any sort of volume to her voice was nearly an impossible task. Thankfully, Winchester men seemed to be good at taking hints and signals without needing much verbal direction. She credited that spidey sense more to their father than their mother. John was apt to scold and correct the boys with a single, stern look or command them with a cutting glance. They usually rolled with it and met his expectations. She was grateful they were able to take her cues as well. The fatigue in her bones was mighty, and the pain was crushing even with the medication

"Anything," Dean nodded earnestly.

"School," Mary replied. "You have to finish school."

"Really?" Dean blinked. "Attendance is your big concern? I've only got three days left in my sophomore year. After Friday, they can't give me any more detention for nearly three months. That's not me making things up. I asked Mr. Phelps if he could front-load punishment for the next year, and he said no. He seemed kind of pissed about that so it must be true."

"Dean," she sighed as she held back an unexpected yet achy chuckle.

Leave it to her first-born to make her laugh when she was in this condition and about to have a serious discussion with him, one that should have happened a year earlier when both were in a better frame of mind. However, better times and better chances were not going to come up, she knew. She could feel the end nearing each day no matter how badly she did not want to see it, and she could not look away anymore.

"College, Dean," she said in a breathy voice. "Promise me you will do your best in school for the next two years so you can go to college. I never got to do that. I wanted that, for you and Sam. Your father and I had a savings account for both of you. We started when you were born."

"Uh, maybe it's just me, but I don't think saving money for that is a good idea," he pointed out. "We're broke, always. What say we cash in my account and do something wild like get a better water heater so I can take a hot shower once in a while, and we can scrub Sammy's girlie hair clean with something other than ice water."

Mary offered him a flat expression, mostly for the jab at his brother's preferred way of wearing his hair. Dean and John were of the same opinion that the youngest of the Winchester clan needed a pair of clippers taken to his mop, but Mary liked his messy locks. They were hardly long enough to call them girlie, and she would fight John tooth and nail (should she find that strength again) if he ever suggested the boy get a Marine regulation cut. In truth, between the two boys, Dean was the one who spent more time on his hair. She had watched him in his room, spiking it just so and making sure it was sufficiently stylish, in a way that reminded her more of a girl primping for a date than a man, but she never said so. Her sons were both handsome boys, but Dean was the teenager. Despite his claims to the contrary, his appearance was something that mattered to him.

"Those first accounts we set up are long gone," Mary said in a weak but flat tone to match his own. That the money had gone first to private investigators to find her sons when they disappeared from their beds on Halloween Night in 1983 wasn't worth mentioning to him, nor was the fact that the other chunk of that money had gone to weapons, fake IDs and ammo when she began hunting again after their disappearance. "We started new accounts again when you and Sammy came home to us. It isn't much, but it's our promise to you. So now I need a promise from you."

Dean sighed and shook his head. Certainly agreeing and lying to her in that moment would have been best, but he couldn't do it. She always knew when he was lying—from his real reasons for sneaking out of the house to why he got suspended, she always knew every false word that had tumbled over his lips. She might not know the truth behind the story, but she definitely knew when he wasn't giving her the real story.

"Mom, I'm not a student," he said. "I'm no good at school. I'm not smart. Sam can have my money. He's good at school. He deserves to go to college."

"Honey, you are very smart," she asserted. "You're very good at the things you want to be good at, Dean."

"Yeah, well, mothers are supposed to think like that," he said. "It's like how you think Sam's crappy poetry is good, and those ugly things he makes in art class are pretty. You're not really a good judge of what we're good at when you think about it, Mom."

Mary took a deep breath and measured the conviction in his voice. He was keeping his tone quiet, but he believed every word he was saying. She wasn't worried about his lack of appreciation for his brother's creative skills. To the contrary, the one thing that never worried her about Dean was his opinion of and devotion to his little brother. When she was gone, she knew Sam would be well taken care of. The young boy had two determined individuals in the house looking out for him and one living just a mile down the road who would do the same.

What worried her was who would take care of Dean. She knew he did not think himself worthy of anyone taking that job. His lack of faith in himself and his future made her ache and hate her disease even more. There simply wasn't enough time with him to undo all the damage a decade without a parent to love him and take care of him had done. John relied on Dean and treated him more like an adult, entrusting him with much of Sam's care simply because Dean had long ago proven he was reliable for that and good at it. To some, it might look like a burden to saddle a 16-year-old with those duties, but from John it was a vote of confidence. For Dean, it was the only thing he felt he was good at normally. Still, that left Dean without anyone to do the same for him and no confident voice in his ear letting him know that he was more than just Sam's keeper.

Mary might not have a lot of time and strength left, but what she had she wanted to devote to a good and deserving cause and she could think of no better recipients of her final efforts than her sons.

"Honey, Mr. Phelps believes in you," she said as she named his history teacher, who at times Dean portrayed in conversations as his arch nemesis.

The man had been on Dean's case for two years, dogging his nearly every step at the high school, seeming to be the one who monitored all of his study halls and who always got him for history class. The man also was the assistant coach of the baseball team and always seemed to catch Dean's every move. While the teenager was suspicious of it, Mary was not. There was more to Phelps than Dean would ever know, and she was grateful the man (and his warden like presence) were on her son's case whenever she was not there to watch over him.

"Mom, Mr. Phelps is a 100 years old and senile," Dean scoffed, taking his normal insulting approach toward the man. "He hates me and is counting the days until I drop out or get kicked out for good. I mean, there's a reason I get nearly all my detentions from him."

"There is, and you're choosing not to see it," Mary countered as she struggled to stay awake. "For the record, he's only 60. Dean, he wouldn't pay such close attention to you if you weren't worth his time. He's a brilliant man. He holds a doctorate in history from Notre Dame."

Dean snorted his lack of agreement on the man's interest in him. He also rolled his eyes at the lack of wow-factor he felt on the man's education and intelligence. In his mind, anyone who was brilliant and had a big, bad degree from a top university shouldn't be teaching at a rundown high school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

"If he's so damn smart, doesn't it kind of beg the question what the hell he's doing here teaching delinquents like me in the first place?" Dean wondered.

"He wants to make a difference, and you're not a delinquent," Mary persisted.

"My school record and certainly Principal Carlson disagree," Dean replied. "I've read all of his complaining letters to you. You know I open them and read them before you see them, right?"

She smiled slightly. She hadn't known for certain, but she had suspected. Dean's ability to have counter arguments and excuses ready as she and John began their lectures was always suspicious to her. Not that she didn't believe he could think quickly on his feet; on the contrary, doing that was half of his problem with the school officials.

"Principal Carlson is a…," she began and paused as she searched for the appropriate term.

"Bureaucratic douche bag?" Dean offered in her silence.

"Say windbag, please, in the future," she said without disagreeing with him. "He knows nothing about you so his opinion is irrelevant. You're very smart, Dean. You just never give yourself the chance or the credit you deserve. Promise me that you will do that whether I am here or not."

He shook his head vehemently. He had accepted, in theory, that she was leaving but to hear her acknowledge it was not something he was ready for. That would mean she had accepted her fate and that she was ready to go. He couldn't accept that. It meant the end had virtually arrived, and time had run out finally.

"Don't say that," he begged. "You can't leave."

"Baby, I know this is hard," Mary swallowed slowly as a prickle of tears pinched at her eyes.

"Then don't go," Dean continued to shake his head. "You told me that you died inside when you couldn't find me and Sammy all those years. Well, we're here now so you can't leave us yet. Without you…"

Her eyes burned with the tears he would not let fall, but she could feel his hand shaking in hers yet his grasp remained gentle. And that was the truth about her boy that so few people knew. He could be brusque and abrupt; he could be crass and rude, but he was as sensitive as his little brother and perhaps a whisker gentler. There was a softness to Dean that pointed those who could find it to the truth about him: He was all heart.

Sam was a thinker, a pondering child, who most thought of as kind and thoughtful. And he was those things, in abundance, but his first reaction to most everything was what he thought about it. His brother, however, was always about how something made him feel. That his feelings were rarely hostile or aggressive was something most of the world would never expect because he had them all fooled by the mighty armor that he forged during a decade of playing the role of parent and bodyguard to his baby brother.

"You have your father and Bobby to…," Mary began as she tried to assure him.

"We need you," Dean pleaded softly on strained vocal cords. "I need you."

"Dean, please," she sighed. "I'm too tired to fight."

"You want to leave me again," he said in a small voice as he stared at his hand clasping hers. "Please don't. I'll be better. I promise. I'll stop arguing so much. I'll listen to you and do what you say. I'll…"

"Promise me you'll do your best and graduate so you can go to college, Baby," she urged.

Dean's shoulders slumped as he nodded slowly. He would give her the truth, not some half-baked lie. If these were her last words from him, he vowed they be true and from his heart.

"I'll make sure Sammy goes," he vowed. "I'll work extra jobs to see that he can afford it. I swear."

"I'm not worried about your brother," Mary replied in a pleading tone. "Sam's always believed he would do great things because he knew that you always believed in him. Your father and I weren't there to do that for you when you were little. I want you to know that no matter what, no matter where I am, that I believe you can do anything, Dean. Now, I want you to prove me right. Honey, if you love me, you will do this. You will promise me, and you will make good on your word."

He lifted his uncertain eyes to meet hers and felt his heart sink. Truth was sour and bitter, in his mind, and he never found that it made him feel better or free or anything that those damn clichés claimed it would do.

"We both know I'm never going to be the valedictorian or the top of my class in anything except detention," Dean said. "Mom, I know you'd prefer it if I was more like Sammy, but I can't be like him; I'm not that good."

"That's not what I want," she explained. "You just need to be Dean Winchester. Not Sam's brother. Not John's son. Not Bobby's shadow. Just be Dean. Trust me, Sweetie, Dean Winchester is impressive and exceptional all on his own. You can do it. You have such a strong mind and an amazing will. You are tough and clever, and you have an amazingly big heart. Honey, you've proven that you can do what is hard and that's why I know you can do what I ask. Now, promise me."

Dean clenched his jaw and felt his mind reeling. She was talking like some afternoon talk show therapist—something he attributed to the forest of pill bottles on the table beside the bed—and staring at him with those crinkled eyes. It was like acid on his skin, burning him and making his eyes water. He looked squarely at her and did what he did best: challenge.

"I'll do all of that if you promise me you won't leave me," he said as he knelt by her bed with his head close to hers.

"Honey, my body can't keep going like this," she sighed. "I've fought all I can."

Dean shook his head in refusal.

"Promise me," he said firmly in the same way his father gave him unwinnable ultimatums.

Mary sighed deeply as she felt her fatigue and the medication haul back on her senses and start to drag her back into the hazy oblivion where she spent most of her days.

"Dean, I don't want to leave you," she said. "I would stay if I could. I will stay with you as long as I can, but I need you to do what I ask no matter where I am. Swear to me that no matter what happens to me, you will not give up on yourself. I want you to have a life with choices that I never had, with opportunities I never got. I know I'll fight harder to stay with you if you do this for me and, if I have to go then I'll rest easier knowing you are doing your very best, always, no matter what, even if I don't get better."

"But… but if you're not here, then…," he began to sputter, stopping only when she dropped his hand and gently touched his cheek with her cold and bony fingers.

"Then you have to work even harder because I won't be nagging you directly every day to stick to your promise, but I will be watching you, Baby," Mary said. "Dean, I will know. Those angels I say are watching over you will have me shouting over them. And just so you know that I am still watching, I will send one of them to kick your ass if you even think of quitting or giving up."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 **A/N:** More to come…


	2. Chapter 2

**oOoOoOo**

John Winchester stared at the car in the bay before him. It was the first of eight cars needing servicing that day at his shop. This was a good sign as it was the 50th day in a row of more than five scheduled jobs for the day. What had started as a rocky venture in July following an even rockier and loud departure from his steady job was turning into a viable business.

Winchester Auto Repair and Service was new but was at least paying its bills. There were two mechanics on staff: John (the owner) and Kurt Hustings (a mechanic John worked with at the old garage and who was as fed up with their boss as John had been). Kurt had a rough past, a felony record in his late 20s for stealing a car and bringing it to a chop shop following his tour of duty in Vietnam. The man took his lumps in the state pen and learned how to fix cars rather than boost them. That was nearly 20 years ago. John could see the man was changed by the experience—and it didn't hurt Kurt was also a former marine. The Corps looked out for its own so when John left his job to strike out on his own, he brought Kurt along and hadn't regretted it for a second.

Kurt was better with women customers. He could schmooze with them and flirt, convincing them to bring their cars back for simple service after a major repair. So far, he'd been successful. John dealt with the hard heads, the clients who thought they knew about cars and what things should cost. The Winchester iron will paid off in those moments and so far most of the customers left satisfied or at least not grumbling loudly enough to give the new garage a bad reputation.

Kurt was also understanding, particularly now that John's temper was worn thin by sleepless nights and backbreaking worry.

Mary was nearing the end. John could see it and feel it. Years earlier, he was certain he lost her when she returned to her hunting crusade to avenge what she thought were the deaths of her two children. Then, miraculously, the boys were returned to the family. After a rocky start to jumping back into married life, John and Mary had found a sense of peace with each other and a new appreciation for each other. There were a few moments in the late spring and early summer when he worried she was on the verge of calling the marriage quits; however, a near miss with the boys' lives while on a camping trip brought the world drastically back into focus for both of them. It didn't really matter that they had little in common outside of sharing children. It was their differences (more than he realized at the time) that brought them together.

There was also the fact that he loved her. Truly. Completely. Insatiably.

He might not have been great at always showing it. Emotion (outside of frustration) wasn't something Winchester men could process. Feeling was fine. Letting anyone else on the planet know what those feelings were or how deep they ran was not.

But for Mary, he would break his staunchly held rules of not sharing those inner workings. For her and his sons.

Except now he needed to keep all of that in check because if he let any of them know what was going on in his heart and mind they would know he was about to fall apart.

He was losing Mary; the love of his life; the mother of his children; the woman for whom he learned to put down the toilet seat and did not object when she put sandalwood candles in his bedroom (at least he thought they were sandalwood; knowing his wife, they might have secretly been ghoul repellent).

"That bad?" Kurt's voice sounded behind John. "Mary have a rough night?"

"Yeah," John swallowed as he shook his head and tried to focus on the job at hand. "Visiting nurse called me just as I got in this morning. After the boys left for school, she arrived and did her assessment. She thinks that…. We've decided that Mary's heading back to the hospital this afternoon."

"Why?" Kurt asked. "I mean, you said there's nothing more they can do. Wouldn't she be happier to spend her final days at home?"

John sighed. The answer was yes and no. He and Mary had this discussion after diagnosis the previous fall. They would fight the cancer on every front possible. She would stick to her routine as much as she could, giving the boys was much normalcy as her condition would allow. However, if things ever got truly bad and the end was near, she didn't want to die at home.

John questioned her about that—wondering if it was some spirit thing involving her remaining trapped in the house after death and becoming violent. He hated that he had to ask her that question, but if anything it had made her smile at him in an understanding and impressed way. She had told him that her spirit lingering was a concern, one that she would fix with having her body cremated then the ashes buried in the consecrated ground of the local cemetery. Her other reason was less supernatural. She didn't want the boys to come home and find her in death throes or already gone but not yet discovered. She wouldn't do that to them any more than she would allow her physical death to become a memory associated with their home. Her illness was not something she could hide from them, but her death would be in a hospital not in the home the family shared.

"In the hospital, they can administer stronger drugs," John replied and gave his employee a knowing look. Kurt nodded in reply. "That's what we explained to the boys."

He shrugged at his own explanation. Kurt read that for what it was, an admission of the bluff and its marginal success.

"Sam believed you and Dean shut his mouth?" he guessed and received a nod in return. "Sammy's too young to understand all of this still. Good call on helping him with that. It's like when you were in 'Nam. Your First Sergeant told you the fight was going to be tough, but you'd have support from the air or the rear, right? Well, it made going into the fight easier, didn't it? Gave you a reason to think you'd be okay and make it out to fight another day."

John nodded, recalling hearing those kinds of lies all the time when he was in Southeast Asia fighting an enemy he rarely saw and didn't understand but that took the lives of so many of his friends.

"Yeah," he snorted with a pained grin. "Lying bastard."

"Well, you know that now," Kurt shrugged. "That's kind of where Dean is at, I guess. He knows it's a lie but that you're telling it for a good reason. Don't worry about him, Johnny. He's a tough kid."

"He's not as tough as he wants the world to believe," he muttered, surprising himself by being able to admit that out loud without feeling any kind of shame or that more explanation was needed.

"They never are," Kurt shook his head. "You can't protect him from this. Even if you tried, he'd never let you."

John nodded in agreement. What would happen next was going to be hard on both of his sons. They had only returned to their mother two years earlier and now she was being taken from them, right in front of their eyes, and there was nothing they could do to stop it or ease the pain she was feeling. This is going to be hard on both of them. He'll spend most of his time trying to take care of Sam."

John felt guilty that he knew that he himself would allow that to happen. He had to do it. For all the reprogramming he and Mary had done to the boys in the last two years so that they learned what it meant to have parents again, there was an underlying routine—operations etched deeply into both of them from a decade of essentially being on their own—which would override any attempt John made to be both mother and father to his youngest. Dean, John knew, could fill a lot of the void Mary's leaving was about to create better than he himself could. He wasn't sure it was healthy or wise, but he also knew that the boys would turn to each other for their needs and comfort first. As long as they were coping while doing so, he wasn't going to step in. His job, as he saw it, was to keep the roof over their heads, food on the table and the electricity on.

Sam's other needs, his support system, his cheerleader, his sounding board and task master was going to be his brother. For two years, John and Mary had done their best to take those burdens off Dean's shoulders, to let him be a kid for a little while. Now, John was going to thrust all of that back on his oldest. He felt as guilty as hell for doing it, but he knew of no other way. Dean was going to need something to focus on, to keep him going and keep him focused on toeing the line to keep himself out of trouble. John was certain that only thing that could do that in Mary's absence was Sam being in need.

"I know you've got Bobby Singer to lean on, but if you need anything," Kurt offered as he slapped John encouragingly on the back.

John nodded silently as he made a mental note to call Bobby and give him an update on Mary's imminent return to the hospital. His relationship with his neighbor was an odd one. On one level, they didn't get along. Both were cantankerous bastards who knew each knew his way was the right way to do anything and that the other was just flat out wrong. They had different temperaments and different philosophies. They believed in different things and different things pushed their buttons.

What they did share was love.

Not for each other but for two boys and one woman: Sam, Dean and Mary.

Bobby had been fond of Mary, like an elder brother might be, since he first met her years earlier when she rejoined the world of hunting and met Bobby in the quest to seek vengeance for her sons. Later, when the boys were found and returned to their family, Bobby took an instant liking to both John's sons. He cared for both boys equally, but he had a special level of patience and affection for Dean, in part because Bobby had seen something in him that needed that kind of support even before Dean's own parents recognized it.

Since then, Bobby had become a surrogate member of the Winchester family, spending holidays and birthdays and even the odd evening with the family at their home which was just down the road from his salvage yard. John didn't mind and had grown to respect and even like the crusty old hunter, but he had one rule: No supernatural or paranormal anything around his family.

Good as his word and true to his affections for the other Winchesters, Bobby Singer, the great and skilled hunter, had hung up his silver, salt and holy water. He rarely took jobs that involved fangs, claws or spirits anymore. He had not been able to walk away from the life entirely, of course. Once pulled in, it seemed no hunter was ever truly out until he was dead. So, to keep an eye on things, Bobby had become sort of a dispatcher for other hunters, acting as a researcher and helping create cover IDs by pretending to be the home office for any number of fake investigators and reporters that other hunters pretended to be.

With a sigh of regret, John started formulating what he would say to let Bobby know that he was going to lose one of his trusty "staffers." Mary occasionally helped him with his rouses to police around the country by portraying secretaries and editors when answering Bobby's many other telephone lines. John never got her to admit it, but he could tell some part of her liked the game of it all. He didn't mind her helping in that fashion as long as that was the only part of hunting she did—that and keeping an eye on the boys.

Neither he nor his wife had never determined who or what stole the Winchester boys from their beds that fateful Halloween night 12 years earlier. Bobby had encouraged them to stop looking as it was wasting time they could be spending just watching their kids grow up. John was all for that approach, but he knew deep down Mary had an aching desire to know, if only to prevent it from happening again. For whatever reason (and John suspected Bobby had a good one), the junkman told them he felt certain it wouldn't happen again.

John walked to the phone at the back of the car bay and decided there was no reason to put off delivering the news any longer.

 **oOoOoOo**

Bobby Singer had a temper.

Usually he kept it in check. Usually he was able to stop seeing red in time to make a good choice about how to react.

Usually.

Just not that day.

After hanging up the phone from John Winchester's call, he had taken the box wrench in his hand and thrown it clear across his private repair shop. That heave sent it through the back window. The sound of the glass shattering felt good.

He wanted to break things, to smash them to bits and to kick the tar out of something.

But he knew it wouldn't do any good.

In the end, he'd need to pick up all the tools he had tossed around like a pissed off poltergeist and repair every shattered window, pick up every overturned workbench and retrieve every far flung tool once the fit burned itself out. (Or so he was always reminding Dean when his temper got the better of him).

So, rather than tear apart his shop, he grabbed the phone and placed a call. Beating the snot out of his possessions wasn't going to get him anything but a hell of a mess to clean up later. A monster, however, would be a nice distraction. Bobby thought a good decapitation or maybe a little blow-torched flesh might help burn the angst and anger out of his soul. So he called a fellow hunter, a brother in arms of a sort, to see if he had any good leads that were relatively close to home.

What Bobby learned instead was that his offer of help had come 48 hours too late to join the latest hunting party.

"A vampire?" Bobby repeated into the phone. "Seriously? Last I heard, Daniel Elkins and his posse had pretty much decimated the last of that breed. Is Bill sure it's a nest?"

The warm, chiding chuckle that carried down the line was a tonic for Bobby's frayed nerves. He could picture her standing behind the bar at the hole-in-the-wall dive she ran with her husband, casually brushing her dark hair off her shoulder while giving a warning look to any patron foolish enough to try and eavesdrop on her chat.

"What my husband is sure of and what he's actually going to find is anyone's guess," Ellen Harvelle said in a dry and controlled way, but there was worry in her tone all the same. "Bill called last night; he's met up with this new hotshot who claims he's finishing off what Daniel's too old to get at. His name's Gordon Walker. I got the skinny on him from R.C. Adams. He says Gordon's cocky but good with his blades. We'll see. If he's half as good as he says, then Bill should be on his way home tonight. Was there something you needed from him Bobby?"

He paused as he considered how to respond. His instinct even when dialing was bad, he knew. He was mad and when he got mad to this level, he wanted blood—preferably the evil and should-be-dead kind. Calling Bill Harvelle to see if he needed help on a quick hunt had been just a whim, but now that the man was on what was surely a wild goose chase it seemed even more idiotic.

And there was also the problem of talking to Ellen.

It was wrong, Bobby knew, to covet a friend's wife but he couldn't help himself. His own wife Karen had been long gone before Bobby ever met Ellen Harvelle so he hadn't felt it was an insult to his late wife's memory. However, it was an affront to his friendship with Bill Harvelle, a solid hunter and devoted family man who helped run a roadhouse that catered to rednecks and hunters alike. Bill and Ellen had a young daughter, Joanna, who was a little hellion the last time Bobby saw her maybe three years earlier. He had enjoyed watching the brat get Ellen tied in knots over wanting to learn to thrown knives instead of going to ballet lessons.

"No," he said as he realized he had paused for too long. "I was just feeling useless and thought I might offer my expertise if Bill had anything interesting he was chasing."

"Oh, that's sweet of you," Ellen's warm voice carried over the line, making Bobby smile despite his sinking spirits—Ellen just had a way about her that could do that for him. "But you know that covering the phones for folks is actually a huge help to all of us. We all understand that you're off the road nowadays seeing as you're a family man lately. How are the boys doing?"

Bobby smiled, again thinking what a gem she was and how lucky Bill was to have her. Ellen knew about the Winchester boys as she was one of the individual who helped pluck them out of the orphanage where they had been hidden in Chicago. She kept loose tabs on them through Bobby ever since.

"They're fine themselves," he said dejected. "Mary's not doing great. Actually, not great would be wonderful news. She's dying of cancer. Nothing more the doctors can do. Johnny just called me to let me know that they're admitting her to the hospital this afternoon before the boys get home from school. She's down to her last couple days."

Bobby heard her sudden intake of breath and a soft but heartfelt curse under that. Ellen might be a tough as nails barkeep and an even tougher wife of a hunter, but she was all heart under her stern stare and unyielding tone.

"Poor girl," she said as her voice grew husky. "She missed her babies for so long and now having to leave them like this? Nothing anyone can do?"

Bobby considered the question. He'd thought about it a lot since Mary was first diagnosed. The answer was a certain 'yes' because something could be done. It just wasn't something anyone should do. There was a sorts of magic that could be tried with varying successes. There were charms and protections that might keep her going, but there was really nothing suitable that would cure her and restore her to the healthy woman she was before all of this started.

Well, nothing sane anyway.

"Short of going darkside, I'm flat out of ideas," Bobby admitted and paused as he hoped Ellen might think of something he hadn't.

"No one like Mary would want to be saved that way," Ellen offered sadly, dashing Bobby's hopes. "She grew up in the life. She knows there are powers you don't mess with and lines you never cross."

"Doesn't mean a guy can't hope," Bobby said. "Guess it's wrong to pray that some fool who deserves an eternity in Hell would make a deal to save a stranger."

"Wrong and something that just would never happen," Ellen remarked. "Bobby, you know as well as I do that people who make those kind of bargains ain't the type to help a stranger. Even if you could find someone on death row who was supposed to get the chair tomorrow, even he wouldn't offer up his soul to save some woman he's never met. No, the people who would do that aren't the type to make a deal. But, just to be sure, you're keeping an eye on John, right?"

Bobby blinked at the question. The initial answer was no. He hadn't seen a reason.

"He wouldn't," Bobby offered but even he heard the question in his answer.

"He loves that woman," Ellen warned. "Nothing a man fighting for his family might not try if he knows there's an option. I'm not saying that's what he's thinking. I haven't talked to John Winchester in two years, but I remember how he used to talk about Mary and how badly he wanted his family back—all of it. He got that wish not long ago. He knows enough about shady side of the world to know what to do and how to do it—that's all I'm saying. You be a good friend now and keep an eye on him, you hear?"

Bobby promised to do so as he told her to let Bill know that if he needed anything.

As he disconnected he gazed out the door of the shop to the former home of St. Gabriel's Parish, a defunct church that was now home to the Winchester clan. The name of the old church raised one more outlandish possibility in Bobby's mind—one last ditch effort that might lead to salvation for Mary Winchester.

"I wonder," Bobby said under his breath as he looked at the place of worship and began doing a mental inventory of the summoning supplies hidden in the false back of his upstairs linen closet.

 **oOoOoOo**

A/N: More to come…


	3. Chapter 3

**oOoOoOo**

A light and tantalizing breeze waltzed through Room 9 of Washington High School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a sunny and mild day. More of the air current would have entered the sophomore history classroom, but there was a body obstructing some of it as one errant student perched on the windowsill far from his assigned seat up front.

" _Mr. Winchester_ ," Norman Phelps, the aged and impatient history teacher droned in his tired sing-song voice to the dark-haired sophomore blocking his view through the window, "while today may be your day with me for the year, I do not believe it is supposed to be the last day of your life. I suggest that you remove yourself from that windowsill and cease breaking the plane between the confines of the building and enticing pull of the great outdoors. You have a seat here by my desk. I assigned it to you personally last fall. Please reacquaint yourself with it before an ill fate befalls you."

The class chuckled. Phelps spent a fair amount of time scolding _Mr. Winchester_ throughout the year. He gave _Mr. Winchester_ extra homework and projects and detention quite often. Still, the 16-year-old persisted in his antics.

That day, sitting with his back leaning out the window that he had opened, Dean kept his knees and feet in the room so, as far as he was concerned, he was technically still "in" school. Vacating his seat for this spot was his final act of defiance in Phelps' class for the school year. His exam was complete, and he was merely waiting out the clock. Phelps was a stickler for school rules, something Dean certainly was not. The old man required his students to remain in the room for the full exam period whether or not all had turned in their tests—which all had by this point. Meanwhile, the rest of the school was pouring out of the building to enjoy the warm skies before the next round of exams for the day.

"Don't worry about me, Mr. P," Dean grinned, leaning out the window further to check the precise shade of blue of the sky. "We're on the first floor. Falling wouldn't hurt."

"I didn't mean you would be injured by a fall, _Mr. Winchester_ ," Phelps replied dryly, while returning his gaze to the collected test papers in front of him. "I was referring to what I will do to you if you continue to try my patience."

The class offered a collective ' _oooo'_ and a chorus of smirks to the teacher's retort. Not to be bested so easily, Dean held out his hands, taunting the man to prove it, but it was a hollow gesture. Dean actually liked Phelps somewhat despite the bitching he did that the man specifically targeted him for punishment. All in all, Phelps wasn't so bad. He certainly didn't play favorites with the rich kids or the school board members' kids or the class geeks like a lot of other teachers did. No, the old coot pretty much disliked all students equally, and Dean could support a bastard attitude like that… up to a point.

Dean's second year at Washington High hadn't gone much smoother than his first. Of course, his first year was a huge adjustment on many fronts. He was going to a new school where he knew no one. He was living in a new town, a new state, in fact. Oh, and he had just learned his real name, been re-introduced to his parents after being missing for 10 years following an unsolved kidnapping of him and his brother. Add to that he had a real home for the first time since he learned to tie his shoes (a home which came with real parents who had real rules—not all of which Dean agreed with) and needed to learn how to accept that it wasn't all some fantastic dream.

Year two started out smoother with none of the astonishing fireworks of year one, but then came the winter holidays and dark cloud of his mother's illness. Since then, everything in Dean's world had been in slow decline: his attendance, his grades, his attitude.

Still, keeping up appearances (at least those that reinforced everyone's bad opinion of him) seemed like a worthy use for his talents, in Dean's mind. Therefore, sitting down and shutting up for the last five minutes of class seemed like a waste of his considerable skills at pissing off people in authority. Stoking someone's temper, making him feel as twisted angry inside as Dean himself felt, also seemed like a good idea. Share the hate was his motto—particularly at that moment. Until that morning's discussion with his mother, Dean's plan had been to go to the office at the end of the week and let them know he was dropping out now that he was 16 and legally permitted to do so. His mother's intervention and the promised she forced him to make that morning about not only not quitting but suffering through perhaps a few additional years of school after high school put a kink in his plans.

His reason for dropping out had a lot less to do with his prowess as a student and a lot more to do with his ability to earn money. Dean had scored a job at an auto parts store the previous fall. The manager was kind of an ass but appreciated Dean's efficiency in keeping their store room organized, which also helped prevent the other employees from ripping him off. When the manager caught one of his guys attempting precisely that, he fired the man and offered Dean his place. Stating that the fired employee was little more than a stoner who forgot half of what he should know about car parts, the man offered to teach Dean all he knew if Dean could put in the number of hours the business needed. Dean had done so—skipping classes to make his shifts. Bobby finally caught him doing it and only promised not to tell Dean's parents if Dean returned to school and cut his hours to just after school and weekends.

It wasn't that Dean was looking to avoid homework and tests—not entirely anyway. The draw of the job was the money.

Finances were always tight in the Winchester household, and they were even tighter now that his father had taken out loans to start his own business and Mom wasn't working because of her illness. Add to that her expensive medicines and treatments and there was nothing but sucking sound from the drain on the family funds. Dean fully expected to start working for his father upon graduation so leaving school early to get a jump on helping pay the bills just seemed wise. Thus far, the money Dean earned at the auto parts store had helped around the house—secretly anyway. No one had noticed, each parent thinking the other had taken care of it, but Dean had been providing Sam's lunch money for most of the year and still managed to put some funds toward his new pastime: rebuilding the wreck of a 1969 Camaro Z28 he bought with Bobby's guidance upon his 16th birthday.

"I mean it, _Mr. Winchester_ ," Phelps voice drew Dean back to the present. "My patience is not to be tried today."

"Isn't assaulting a student against the school code, sir?" Dean wondered, tossing in the ' _sir'_ so Phelps wouldn't be overly antagonized. "If it isn't, it really should be."

"You would need to read the school code to know for certain," Phelps replied. "I invite you to do so. If you would like to make changes to that code, you would need to participate in student government."

"Uh, if nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve," Dean smirked knowingly. "William Tecumseh Sherman, right? Answer number 22 on the exam, by the way. Any chance I can get bonus points for taking some of this exam orally?"

Phelps looked up and stared at Dean through his round, steel-rimmed glasses. He then looked at the clock. There were only two minutes left in this school year. He would let this transgression slide. After all, he would have _Mr. Winchester_ to mold during World History as a Junior the next year. The aging teacher decided that rather than scolding him, he would simply add to the boy's summer reading assignments.

 _Mr. Winchester_ intrigued Phelps. Diamond in the rough might have been a bit of a cliché but none the less apropos. There was also the matter of the student's history.

The teenager's school records from Chicago had some deliberate alterations that prompted Phelps to dig into the boy's past. When his search led him to an old friend, Bobby Singer, Phelps arrived at the salvage yard with the boy's file, a bottle of whiskey, and a slew of questions not long after meeting the erasable _Mr. Winchester_. What Bobby told the teacher, and it was not overly much, let Phelps know this boy was a special case and required equally skilled handling (and lots of discipline). The special part came in how to approach the boy. After all, Phelps, knew that no one so deeply dear to or involved with Bobby ever had a simple or easy story. Phelps was one of the few in Sioux Falls who knew the other things that happened at Singer's Salvage Yard (the things that had nothing to do with junk cars or scrap metal), and Phelps occasionally helped obtain obscure texts for the junk man's fascinating and very elite library.

Therefore, at Bobby's request, Phelps manipulated class scheduling so that the Winchester boy was in first his Freshman Civics and later his Sophomore American History classes. Phelps would claim Mr. _Winchester_ yet again the next year and during his senior year.

In Phelps' estimation, _Mr. Winchester_ had a sharp and intuitive mind, a lazy academic streak twice the size of South Dakota, and a mouth that usually got in the way of properly dealing with either. The teen was liked well-enough by many of the students although few actually called him a friend. Less robust was his fandom among the teaching staff. There was near-universal agreement among the faculty that he was a lost cause and he needed to be watched carefully if only to keep control of their classrooms. The teen bored easily and tuned out frequently. His quick wit and boundless guile got him into as much trouble as it got him out of. In Phelp's and Bobby's opinion, the busier one kept _Mr. Winchester_ , the better it was for everyone. However, as the clock wound down to the final seconds of the school year, Phelps reminded himself with a slightly relieved and sly smile that _Mr. Winchester's_ summer was someone else's problem.

 **oOoOoOo**

Three hours later, the third floor hallway was nearly empty when the crash of a foot colliding with a locker door. The reverberation and echo nearly obscured the curse that accompanied the assault on the locker. Dean was, as his actions and words indicated, pissed. His jaw was clenched as he crushed the two pieces of paper in his hand. One was from Phelps—homework for the summer in the form of a reading list nearly two pages long and footnoted with a nicely worded threat that the work needed to be done by the first day of the new school year in late August or it would double in size by September.

Quitting, Dean seethed, had never looked so appealing.

Except his Mom had made him promise he wouldn't.

He was sure he hadn't dropped any obvious hints about his plans to drop out, but somehow she had known. Curled up in a bed, whacked out on painkillers and wasted into little more than a skeleton with sunken eyes, but she had known. Dean shook his head in both frustration and admiration; the lady was like some kind of mind reader, he was virtually certain.

And soon she would be gone.

That was the reason for the other note crumpled in his fist—or what the note didn't say but Dean's own spidey senses were telling him. It was a message from his guidance counselor. Dean's father had called the school and left a message for him with the front office. He was not to take the bus home. He was supposed to walk instead to the garage to pick up the car to do something for his father.

Normally, that kind of change in plans would have had Dean grinning from ear to ear. His father's car, now fully restored to its original glory, was a thing of beauty, a wonder of the world, a vacation on four wheels.

Except being given the keys today struck a cold bolt of fear in his heart. Dean rarely got to drive the Impala solo and never for this kind of task. First off, it was in the middle of the day. His father normally kept the car in the lot at the garage (in part as a draw for some business) on workdays. Giving Dean the car meant the old man had something else, something more important, to do. Right now, only one thing would take him away from his budding business and leave him without the need of his vehicle.

That thing was confirmed for Dean by the second part of the note. His father was at the hospital with his mother. She was being admitted again. Dean was to get his brother home from school, feed him wait to hear from his father about both of them going to the hospital to see her.

Stinging tears, the ones he would not let fall, bit at his eyes as he blinked hard and thrust his fist into the locker door for good measure.

"Wow," a young female voice called to him. "What did it do to you?"

Dean turned in surprise to see Lucy Reese, cheerleader and (in most guys' opinions) professional tease. Normally, Dean would have leaned casually back against his locker and grown strategically aloof, showing her a lack of interest, which would usually have the opposite effect. Lucy was cute and expected attention. Giving her a brush off often got her to try harder.

But this wasn't a day for games. Dean needed to hop on the Nike express and get over to the garage a few blocks away to pick up his ride, run to the burger joint Sam preferred which was (inconveniently) on the other side of the city, pick up some grub, then make it to the elementary school before Sam needed to get on the bus. Time for Lucy McFlirts-A-Lot wasn't on his schedule.

"Uh, just letting it know I'll be back next year," Dean quipped as he grabbed his backpack.

"It was funny today," Lucy smiled as she sauntered closer, flipping her long blond locks over her shoulder expertly. "That thing you said to Phelps, I mean. You know, he's going to have your ass for it next year."

"Oh, he's already started," Dean replied. "Got a reading list I need to complete before we're back in this hell hole in a couple months. Bastard won't let me have a minute of peace so I figure I owe him the same any chance I get."

"Good thinking," she nodded as she leaned closer.

Dean sighed. Any other day he would gladly have spent some alone time letting her rub whatever parts of her she wanted to him, but this was not any day. This day was a countdown—one he had done his damnedest not to let anyone in the school know about—for his mom; her one of her last days or maybe _the_ final one. The last thing Dean wanted was anyone's phony sympathy or crap pity.

"Uh, yeah," he said vaguely and turned to go only to find Lucy leaning forward suggestively giving him the slightest of glimpses of the lacy edge of her bra, hidden just beneath her tight-fitting T-shirt with the plunging neckline.

"Oh, do you like my necklace?" she asked in a breathy fashion as she followed Dean's gaze.

"Necklace?" he blinked and focused enough to see there was some lump of glass or other colored crap on chain around her neck and nestled against her skin. "Sure. Why not? It's… nice."

"It's a crystal that has powers," Lucy insisted while pushing her chest toward him further. "It's Eye of Agate. It increases sexual energy and stamina."

Dean felt his eyebrows (and other parts of him) rise at that little factoid. If not for the wadded paper in his pocket digging into him as a reminder he had other pressing matters, he might have expressed his skepticism and asked her to prove the rock had any juice in it. However, the clock at the far end of the hall reminded him he would need to sprint to the garage if he was going to make it to the elementary school before the buses started boarding.

"It's… you," Dean said painfully as he ducked his head and stepped around her. "See ya, Luce."

 **oOoOoOo**

Mrs. Bachman's sixth grade class at Thomas A. Edison Middle School filed back into their classroom after recess (their final one of all time before starting junior high the next year). The 12-year-olds were bursting with energy and ready to begin the easiest part of the day: turning in their textbooks and cleaning out their desks. Their teacher had extra garbage cans in the room just for the occasion (for the desks, she reminded students, not the books). Several of her students would be done promptly as their desks did not look like archeological dig sites. Those few she would let converse quietly with each other as long as they did not disturb those cleaning.

Two of those fortunate few were seated in the back corner of the room. One was a skinny boy with a mop of floppy straight, brown hair and hazel eyes, who sat dejectedly in his seat with his arms folded as a deep pout turned down the corners of his mouth. The other boy, a blond with gray eyes and a habit of squinting a lot when he talked, turned instantly to ask him an urgent question.

"Sam, is your brother's car finished yet so he can pick you up?" Tommy Reese asked his best friend, Sam Winchester.

Tommy knew Sam's brother had a driver's license and was building himself a car; he was older and cool, but he still talked to Sam (and sometimes even Sam's friends). In truth, Tommy was afraid of Dean Winchester because he was older and so cool. He felt a little weird around Dean because Tommy's big sister Lucy cut Dean's picture out of the year book and drew a heart around it; she kept it taped to the inside of her jewelry box. Tommy's parents knew about the picture and were not happy. They liked Tommy's friend Sam, but his older brother was considered trouble by them.

Which was another thing that made Dean seem even cooler.

"No," Sam continued to scowl. "Uncle Bobby said it's going to take him 10 years to finish it."

When Dean bought the heap of metal in January, he was excited and always at the salvage yard doing some sort of work on it, but whenever Sam dropped by to see if it was done yet, he couldn't see where much of anything had changed. It didn't matter that Dean would rattle off a dozen things he claimed to have done to the pile of junk. All Sam could see was that there were no seats, no windows and a lot of wires and weird parts under the hood that didn't look like they were connected to anything. What fascinated Dean about the mess, Sam could not understand—and that bothered him. He didn't like it when Dean did stuff he didn't understand. They were supposed to be partners and best buddies. Dean turning 16 and getting his license was one of the worst things ever in Sam's mind because it changed what Dean talked about and cared about… mostly.

Sure, Dean still cared about the way those stupid girls used to drive by their house slowly to wave at him before driving away really fast, but that also was something Sam didn't understand and didn't like. He asked Dean to explain that too but all he said was 'your time will come, Sammy.'

It was the part where he got called Sammy that made Sam stop asking Dean to explain. Sammy, the 12-year-old asserted, was the name of a little kid. _Sam_ wasn't a little kid anymore. He was going into junior high. He was even getting a little taller finally. One of these days, if he practiced enough, he might even knock Dean down when they would spar at Krav Maga in the basement. His father was allowing Dean to teach him more about the different holds, blocks and hits in that martial art now, so (obviously) Sam was no longer a little kid. Therefore, he no longer wanted to be called Sammy.

"Can Dean borrow your Dad's car to pick you up?" Tommy asked.

Tommy's sister Lucy would never be seen with him in public, but Sam's brother never shoved him away when he was around high school kids. Dean let Sam go with him to the diner in town and even brought Sam to movies that Sam wanted to see—he sat with Sam and everything even if people he knew could see them. Once in a while, Dean came with his Uncle Bobby to pick Sam up at school; he would walk to the classroom to meet up with Sam and walk out with him in front of everyone like he wasn't even embarrassed about having a little brother. Even though Sam grumbled about it and complained usually, Tommy thought Sam's brother was awesome (which made Sam like a rock star because anyone who had a cool brother like Dean, who liked his little brother publicly, had to mean that the little brother was just as cool; that was like a scientific fact as far as Tommy was concerned).

Sam usually disagreed about that, but Tommy figured that was just his friend trying not to show off.

"No," Sam shook his head. "Dad has the car with him at work. Dean has to ride the bus home."

Sam smirked at that. Dean might think he was cool, but he had the same eternally long bus ride that Sam did, only it was worse for Dean because everyone else he knew his age already had a car. Dean's friend Chuck had one and could have dropped Dean off at home, but their parents forbid it.

Chuck Pratt was one of the few people Dean was actually friends with at school, as far as Sam knew. Dean wasn't, as Uncle Bobby said, socially inclined. But he did hang out with Chuck once in a while. Both played baseball for the high school team and had a few classes together. They were also known for finding trouble together—or they had been until Dean got all moody and quiet over the winter. Sam thought most of that was due to Dean being tired. Sam remembered that kind of crankiness from his older brother when they lived in the orphanage and in the foster homes in Chicago. When Dean was super tired, he was a terrible grouch and only Sam dared to hang out with him.

And, since Sam was probably the only person under 30 who wasn't afraid of Dean's grouchy attitude, Sam figured he was probably also the only person who knew why Dean was so tired. It was his job.

Dean thought he was being secretive and hiding it from everyone, but Sam figured it out months earlier. He came down for breakfast one morning before Mom and Dad were in the kitchen and he saw Dean taking money out of his wallet and putting it where Sam's lunch money should be. Sam pretended he didn't notice, but the next day Sam snuck downstairs early and saw the same thing again. He wondered for a little while how Dean was getting that money. In truth, Sam worried Dean was stealing it from someone. He remembered from their time in Chicago that Dean wasn't above taking something if he thought Sam needed it. Back then, it didn't seem so wrong. They had nothing and no one was taking care of them so whatever Dean took it was for survival.

Now, it seemed wrong and criminal to do that kind of thing since they had a family with parents who took care of them.

Sam worried that Dean stealing money would land him in jail and he wouldn't be allowed to stay with their family. It was Tommy (or rather his sister) who clued Sam into the truth about where Dean was getting his money and put the youngest Winchester's mind at ease. When Lucy got stuck giving Sam and Tommy a ride to the library in February, she said they needed to stop by a store first. Sam thought it odd that they pulled into the parking lot of a car parts store and odder still when she told him to stand outside the car and wait while she went through the back door of the store. Sam agreed with some reluctance and was surprised when his brother stepped outside a moment later wearing a worried expression.

It did not take him long to figure out what was going on. Tommy's sister had used Sam as a rouse to get Dean to step outside of _his job._ Sam veritably glowed inside when he realized Dean was getting money the legal way—just hiding that he was doing it. Sam simply shrugged when Dean asked him what was wrong, but then he quickly put the picture together. He made Sam promise not to tell their parents he had a job then spent a few minutes flirting with Tommy's sister before the interlude was over.

Problems like that seemed so long ago now, Sam realized.

As if to underline how strange and unpredictable his life was getting, there was a knock on the door that Mrs. Bachman answered then called Sam to her desk after the visitor departed.

"Sam, your father called the front office and made arrangements for you not to take the bus home today," she said sweetly. "Your brother will be picking you up instead."

Sam nodded his understanding but felt his fears spike and his stomach drop.

Dean wasn't allowed to drive Sam on his own usually. More often than not, when Dean was going to drive, one of their parents was in the car with him. Dean simply was never given the car by himself since they only had one. Sam had asked, as had Dean, numerous times to let Dean pick up their Dad's car after school so he could pick up Sam and drive him home. It would prevent Sam from wasting so much time on the bus and let Dean do what he seemed to like most lately: drive.

But their parents usually refused.

Sam couldn't figure out why. Since getting his license, Dean was a changed person. First off, he had been good, exceptionally good (at least for Dean). He was doing all the chores Dad gave him without complaining even once (which was like a miracle); he had even studied for all of his exams and let Bobby quiz him (and he passed those—another planet shifting event). Sam knew most of it was because of Mom being sick, but if Dean wanted to pretend it was just to show he was worthy to drive the car, Sam would let him think he was fooling the world.

Unfortunately, their father was not swayed.

Their father had this insane idea that Dean needed more time becoming comfortable driving before he would be allowed to drive with just Sam in the car. Dean could drive solo or with his father (or with Uncle Bobby), but never with just him and Sam. Sam protested alongside his brother at the unfairness of it. He assured his father that he was certain Dean would be careful; there was nowhere in the world where Sam was safer than with Dean. In fact, Sam reminded him that Dean used to give him rides on the dangerous streets of Chicago on his bike, and they never had a serious mishap.

That, their father said, was precisely the reason he was saying no. Dean needed to demonstrate good judgment regularly before being entrusted with Sam as his sole passenger. A history of charioting his little brother on the handlebars of a bike through treacherous construction sites and busy intersections was not evidence of safety or being responsible. Dean swore (loudly) at that and then at Sam (breaking his good behavior streak with just a few syllables) for getting involved. Rather than be mad at Dean, Sam swore at himself (quietly) because he should have thought through his argument better before speaking. By the end of the discussion, Sam was nearly as mad as Dean.

Dean's anger was simply that he wasn't allowed to drive whenever he wanted. He flashed his license in his father's face, reminded him it was legal, and reminded him of his test score (100—the only time Dean ever got that grade on anything as far as Sam knew), but their father was firm. Sam's indignation was simpler and more selfish. He was tired of riding the bus when they had a perfectly acceptable alternative.

He hated the bus. The Winchesters lived at the very last stop for his bus route. That meant Sam was on the bus for 45 minutes every day even though it was only a 15 minute drive from their house to the school (less probably if Dean was driving). In fact, the bus didn't even bring him home. It only went as far as his bus stop, the driveway at Singer's Salvage (which was a mile from his house if he walked along the road, or a quarter of a mile if he cut through the back field's from Bobby's to his family's home).

Other than the length of his bus ride, Sam didn't mind living far from town. He spent the first 10 years of his life, the part where he didn't know his parents, living in the rough parts of Chicago where there was always noise and cars and no grass or trees. The fields and meadows around his house now were quiet and left him lots of room to fly a kite, play soccer with his friends, and just lay on his back while listening to crickets and watching the clouds drift by. Dean sometimes asked Sam if he was working on his method acting for a maxipad commercial when he did those things but to Sam those moments were heaven—or what he thought heaven should be like.

Not that he liked to think about heaven much lately.

Heaven reminded him of dying and that made him think of his Mom. Now that Dean was coming to pick him up at school, Sam began to worry that maybe his goodbye to her that morning had been more final than he knew. He dropped his chin as an overwhelming sensation of helplessness—one he had been shoving to the back of his mind for weeks—began flooding through his body.

He was just a child, a mere 12 years old. All logic dictated that there was nothing he could do to help his mother when all the doctors, all the surgery and all the medicine had failed.

Then again, his face scrunched when an alternative idea (one Dean would surely scoff at), came to mind. Maybe, Sam thought, just maybe there was something he could do.

 **oOoOoOo**

 ** _A/N:_** More to come…


	4. Chapter 4

**_oOoOoOo_**

The smooth riding Impala coasted to a halt in the afternoon shade of the Black Alder tree on the north side of the old church converted into a house that Sam and Dean called home. It had been a quiet ride from the elementary school back to the house. Dean hadn't even turned on the radio to his favorite station, the one that Sam hated but their father and Kurt listened to at the garage all day with the old songs on it no one liked anymore. Conversation during the ride had been short and awkward. Sam had initially feared Dean was the one picking him up just so that he could give Sam bad news.

When he realized that was not the case, things in the car got extra quiet. Usually, when Sam felt this kind of confusion and worry, he turned to Dean to explain things and make him feel better. Only now, Sam could see Dean was just as confused and even more worried than he was—and that flat out scared the youngest Winchester.

Normally, just the two boys being left on their own was a recipe for having fun—and they even had a car rather than a measly old bike now—but neither was interested in anything other than getting home. Dean apologized for running short on time to grab food at the diner for them, but Sam understood and assured his big brother he didn't feel like eating anything; if he did later, he knew there was peanut butter and bread at home.

So they arrived at the house at the height of the day's heat to find the place locked up tight and empty. It was the first time either had experienced that since moving in two years earlier. The mother, even when she was working, was always home when Sam got off the bus. She took her lunch break at the library late in the day so that she could be home when he arrived. Once Dean got home from school, she would return to her job for another couple hours. Once she got sick and couldn't work anymore, she was home all day.

Except now she was gone today. That twisted a knot in Sam's stomach that made him even gladder they hadn't wasted any money on food at the diner. He felt that he might even puke up his lunch from a couple hours earlier as the fear and pain persisted with each step they took toward the house.

"How do we get in?" Sam asked suddenly with a wide and worried eyes. "Mom's always here when we get home so it's never locked. Dean, we don't have a key."

Dean turned his head and gaped at his brother. The kid worried about such strange and pointless things. A locked door had never stopped Dean Winchester—at least, not since he learned to pick locks from a retired Mossad operative living/hiding out in Chicago several years earlier.

"The rabbi taught more than Krav Maga, Sammy," Dean assured his little brother of something the kid should have remembered. "But even if he didn't, I've got these."

As he spoke, dangled his father's key ring in front of Sam's eyes and watched the little guy blush with embarrassment. The reaction (like the question) were all the evidence Dean needed that his baby brother was a mess inside. Sam usually thought things through and figured out answers before most of the question was even out of his mouth.

"Oh, right," Sam sighed.

He was about to ask Dean what they should do now as he had no homework and was pretty sure Dean wasn't going to study for whatever exam he had next, but he never got the chance. Just as he opened his mouth to ask the question, Dean suddenly bolted toward the house. Sam wasn't sure why his brother took off in such a hurry, particularly since it was so hot and there was no one waiting inside for them. He wondered briefly if Dean was feeling as badly in his stomach as he was, but Sam decided it was unlikely Dean was running to the house just to throw up. He stared anxiously at the lonely dwelling as his thoughts from school and what he might do to help his mother came back to him.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

The ringing sound had been faint in the front yard, but Dean's ears were extra sharp from late nights of hearing even the slightest sigh or whimper from his mother. When she finally took to her bed a few weeks earlier, she began sleeping in the hospital bed brought into the house by the visiting nurse. They set it up in the small room that had previously served as the dining room. That room looked out on the front yard so she could watch her children leave for and return from school. It was on the first floor and about as far from Dean's bedroom as you could get and still be inside the house, but somehow he had managed to hear her on those nights when his father was too tired to hear her after his 14 hour days at the garage. She would whimper softly, trying desperately not to disturb anyone with her pain, but Dean would poke his head into her room and hand her the medicine she was too weak to grab herself.

So hearing soft sounds most might miss was second nature to Dean at the moment. While he might not normally have rushed to answer a phone, there was nothing normal about his world today. He knew, instinctively, that it was his father calling before he even lifted the receiver. When he did so, he was breathless with his heart pounding from both the exertion of his sprinting and his fear of what he might be told.

"Dad?" Dean gasped as he grabbed phone attached to the wall in the kitchen from its cradle.

"Dean?" John's voice carried deep and gravelly over the line. "You sound out of breath. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Dean replied, forcing himself to take a deep breath and exhale slowly. "We just got home, and I ran to get the phone. I didn't want to miss the call."

"Why are you just getting home now?" John demanded. "Your exams were done two hours ago and Sam's school day ended thirty minutes ago."

"Well, this town is populated by idiots," Dean said sourly. "Your car was blocked in at the shop by some moron who wanted his winter tires taken off. What kind of dumbass still has winter tires on in the middle of friggin' June?"

John groaned softly, feeling his son's frustration and slightly proud he'd managed to use a tense word that didn't require censoring. In other circumstances, John might have found himself chuckling at the accomplishment, but he'd lost all semblance of humor weeks ago when his wife made him sign papers regarding the disposal of her remains—something he had just had to acknowledge on yet another hospital intake form.

"How is Mom?" Dean asked instantly. "Can we come see her now?"

John clearly heard the desperation and eagerness in the questions, but he had no good answer for either of them. Mary was technically no worse than when she arrived by ambulance early that afternoon. John had wanted to driver her himself, but the visiting nurse insisted Mary needed to be transported by paramedics as she was now so frail. They consented to letting him ride in the back with her. Bobby had been kind enough to pick John up at the shop and bring him home so that the Impala could be left at the garage for Dean to retrieve. That felt like days ago but in truth only three hours had passed.

"She's getting settled," John said rather than provide a more detailed answer. "They did some tests when she first arrived. She's just getting into her room now."

"Okay," Dean nodded. "What number is it? Sam and I can be there in like 15 minutes."

"No," John disagreed. "I don't want you coming here just yet. Your Mom's pretty wiped out from getting checked in and all the tests. She needs to rest before she has any visitors."

"We're not visitors, Dad," Dean insisted. "We're her family."

John pinched the bridge of his nose and kept his voice low, but the overall tone conveyed his lack of patience or interest in having a debate.

"I'm giving you an order, Dean," he said flatly. "For now, stay at home and keep an eye on your brother. Make sure he eats dinner and have him get a bag packed. He's spending the day with Bobby tomorrow while you're at school. I want him ready so that in the morning he can head over before you go to school."

"Where will you be?" Dean asked.

The accusation in his tone could be read several ways. There was a hint of teenage drama—as though these small chores were asking too much of Dean's time. John knew that simply wasn't accurate. Dean often only felt useful and needed when he was charged with looking after Sam. There was a hint of betrayal in his voice as well—as if John was hiding something from him that he deserved to know. Again, John was certain that, of his two boys, Dean certainly had a clear picture of what was going on and what was going to happen next. The main edge in Dean's voice, the father knew, was fear.

Dean lived with a pocket of fear kept close to his heart ever since he found his family again. Some part of him believed that he would lose them (or they would leave him). Hearing that doubt pointed in his direction pained John in a way that he could not describe with words—nor could he cure it with them. He had promised Dean two years earlier that he would prove to him that his family would never leave him; John insisted the evidence of this would be racked up over decades so that all Dean had to do was stick around and he would see. The anxiety radiating from his question of John's intentions felt a lot like starting at square one with the boy again.

"I'm staying at the hospital with your mother for now," John said then lied a bit in an effort to not worry his son further. "There's got a ton of forms they need to explain to me before I can sign them. By the time I'm finished with all that, your Mom will be awake and ready to see you boys. I'll call you when that happens."

Dean clenched his jaw and felt a knot of anger wrestle to a draw with the strangled sob he held in his chest. A year earlier, he might have considered resisting a bit more, arguing with his father to try and change his mind and allow them to go see her now, but his mother's illness changed all that. Discipline, John's required routine and order for the house, might be a bit suffocating but Dean could not deny that just following the man's rules often made things easier.

Not that doing so was easy for Dean. Following rules had never been his strong suit, but he learned the value of following a code when he had to save his brother and himself the previous summer when a camping trip with Bobby nearly turned deadly. At that time, they were nearly the main course for a creature that his father and a host of park rangers claimed had been a rogue and aggressive bear. In order to haul himself and his injured brother out of the Black Hills of Wyoming alive, Dean gave himself a few simple rules, firm orders, that he needed to follow. Although he did not remember most of them any longer as his concussion made most of the last two days of the trip quite hazy, he remained convinced of two things. One, those rules were what saved them; and two, the thing in the woods hadn't been a bear.

"Dean, you still there?" John asked as the line grew quiet.

Quiet and Dean didn't usually go together in John's estimation. His oldest son liked noise and movement most of the time; a frenetic teenage pace that exhausted most people was what seemed to calm Dean and keep him focused.

"Yes, sir," Dean responded flatly.

"I know you want to be here, son," John said in a more conciliatory voice. "But I need you do what I tell you. We talked about this, Dean. I need you to step up and show me some maturity. I'm counting on you to be an example for your brother. Are you with me?"

Dean's throat was tight and sore with the strain of now screaming and holding in the choking feeling gripping his insides. He mumbled a rough acknowledgement in reply as that was all the sound he could manage in that instant.

"Your job right now is taking care of Sammy," John said. "That's what your mom and I need from you. She'll rest better tonight if she knows we're taking care of Sammy."

Whether Mary would be lucid when the boys did see her was John's concern. He preferred letting their children stop in briefly that afternoon while she slept. He thought it best that they see she was getting cared for and that she did not appear to be in any more pain than when she was at home. Mary, however, had insisted she wanted to be awake when her sons visited. John worried that seeing the effects of morphine draining away her senses would be more difficult than viewing her in a sleeping state, but he could not deny her wishes.

He tried very hard not to think of them as her last wishes, yet what else could he call them? There was a heavy knot in his chest whenever he saw her. He knew the pain for the boys was equal if slightly different. He was going to lose the love of his life, the mother of his children, and his partner soon. He'd faced a similar sensation of loss when his children disappeared and all the experts (both the civilian and supernatural ones) told him the boys were dead. History showed that he managed to keep going each day, even if he didn't want to do it. The boys, however, didn't know about that kind of stamina.

 _Correction_ , he told himself. Sam didn't know about it.

He had been a baby when he lost his family and was none the wiser about what he lost when he was abducted. Dean had been four, nearly five, when he had his world taken away from him. He had learned the brutal lesson of marching onward, facing the next lonely, cold and terrifying day without the people who loved him.

It was something John didn't like having in common with his oldest, but it was something that they shared and would (he hoped) help them as they tried to make it through this ordeal. Mary, John knew, was the glue for the family. She was also their anchor. He might have been the Marine, but she was the tougher than nails general who kept them together, on task and doing what they should—and she had managed to do it while making them all feel loved and secure. She had turned a house into a home and strangers into family once more. Sam was an easy sell on those fronts. He was a well-behaved and thoughtful child who was just beginning to hit his moody and argumentative teenage years. Dean was the challenge, their mouthy, caustic and truculent teenager. But Mary had tamed him, with very little effort, to the point that he rarely challenged his parents any longer.

Losing her, John knew, was going to send the family into a tailspin that he wasn't sure he could recover. He knew it would be an egregious insult to her memory for that to happen after all the work she did to make them a family again.

But he couldn't think about that right now.

Right now, he needed to just know his children were fed and would be where he needed them to be when he needed them to be there.

At that moment, Mary was asleep from the medication as much as her growing exhaustion. The IVs feeding her fluids had already started to work somewhat on her. John could see the pain was backed off a bit from the lack of tension in her terribly thin face. It didn't give her a robust, healthy appearance, but at least she looked no worse than she had a week earlier when the doctors told her that the time she had left was a matter of days rather than weeks.

What he needed, John knew, was a miracle. He bowed his head slightly as he realized he'd take anything, a miracle, a spell, a wish, whatever. Anything to turn back the clock on this dreadful illness that was about to claim the life of someone he considered his very own real life warrior princess.

It was somewhere between hoping for a miracle and comparing is wife to Zena that an idea popped into his head, a stray thought that had no business being there but one John was surprised hadn't come to him sooner. While he hated to cut off his son, he realized there was another call he needed to make.

"I'll call you again after when your Mom's rested some more," John said. "When she's up to it, you and your brother can come see her. It might just be for a quick check in, but I know she wants to ask Sam how his last day at school was and ask you how your exams went."

Dean scoffed, not at the topics of discussion (he was certain those would be of interest to her), but more about how dull the conversations would be.

"You might suggest she should pick something better," Dean offered in listless tone. "The point of her going to the hospital was is to make her feel better. I know hearing about Sammy's boring day of going over a check list of returned library books nearly put me in a coma half an hour ago."

"How is Sam?" John asked rather than debate the topic with him.

Dean looked up to see Sam shuffling into the house, dragging his bag along the floor. He locked eyes with his little brother, who was actually giving him the mixed smirk/scowl expression the 12-year-old could manage. That was a good sign in Dean's experience. It meant Sam figured out who was on the phone but also understood the call wasn't one with devastating news. Dean jutted his chin forward, signaling to his brother that he could go about his normal routine for returning home from school. Sam nodded easily in return as he hauled his back up to his shoulder then scuffed across the room toward the stairs. As Dean heard his floppy feet reach the upper floor where their bedrooms were, he answered his father.

"He's okay, but he knows Mom going back to the hospital is a big deal," Dean replied in a quiet voice. "He asked me if she's going to die soon."

That wasn't exactly the whole truth.

Sam had actually fallen apart once he got in the car in the school parking lot and through his tears asked Dean if their mother was already dead. Once Dean convinced him she wasn't, then Sam asked if it was going to happen soon. Still, Dean figured that the conversation specifics were between him and his little brother. Their father had enough to deal with at the hospital without worrying about Sam. Besides, his little breakdown didn't last long once he knew Dean was only picking him up as a favor to their father rather than because he was delivering dire news. After that, the kid perked up a little bit but kept shooting Dean furtive glances, as if making sure he heard Dean correctly when he promised him they would see their mother that evening.

"What did you tell him?" John asked quickly.

"That I'm not a doctor so I wouldn't know," Dean replied sullenly.

It was a lame answer, but it was the most truthful and least harmful one he could think of when he got hit with the question. He was frankly surprised it had taken Sam this many weeks to ask it, but he figured the little guy had wanted to ask all along but had just resisted in an effort to avoid the answer or to protect Dean from having to give it to him. Then again, Sam might have asked it of someone else—Bobby came to mind instantly—and kept that from Dean. Again, the younger Winchester seemed to be occasionally taking a page from his brother's playbook with his attempts at shielding the family from his woes and sorrows. Dean shook his head at that and figured he needed to find some way to put an end to that craziness soon. Sammy was the baby; he got protected; it wasn't his place to protect anyone.

"That was good," John sighed, thankful for his son's quick thinking. "You don't have to explain any of this to your brother. I'll do that."

John had several reasons for not wanting his oldest delivering that kind of news. First off, it wasn't Dean's job. The boys might have spent a decade without a father to explain things and guide them, but that ordeal was over now. He was there… usually. Some of his recent absences were beyond his control. The new business had taken up most of his time until Mary grew too ill to take care of herself in the last couple weeks.

Next, John knew Dean was apt to lie to Sam to shield him from hard and painful truths despite knowing full well that in the end the real answers always came to light. Those moments usually left Sam feeling a little sour toward his older brother; Sam often misunderstood Dean's motivation. The younger boy falsely thought that Dean considered him was too weak to handle the truth. What Sam hadn't figured out yet was that it was Dean who couldn't handle Sam knowing the truth. Dean lived under a mistaken belief that allowing Sam every possible second of happiness (regardless of the cost) was somehow his purpose in life. That, John knew, was a scar from a stolen childhood which forced Dean to become parent and protector of his little brother when he was still in need of those shields himself.

Finally, John felt one of the few bits of relief he could offer Dean at this time was to not make him be the one to tell his brother that their mother was dying. It was a small thing, a token really, but it was all the solace that John could offer.

"So if Mom is still resting past 7 tonight, we can't go see her since that's when visiting hours are over," Dean reminded his father. "You'll need a ride home. You call me, and I can pick you up."

"Uh, no," John said carefully. "There's not set visiting hours. They've got different rules for patients on this hall."

He paused and waited for his son's reaction. Dean, for all his attempts to behave like an imbecile and confuse people, was a very clever individual. He had a wily and shrewd mind, one that he rarely put to good or productive use. John was certain that his son would easily piece together what his father was not saying. The slight but sharp intake of breath John discerned over the line was all the confirmation he needed.

"I see," Dean said in rough voice as he swallowed the baseball sized lump that had sudden welled up in his throat.

No visiting hours meant special rules. Special rules meant special situations. Both added up to the same thing: the end. Dean hung his head and knuckled a hint of moisture from his eye.

"After you feed Sam, leave the car at home and walk over to Bobby's," John continued. "I'll call you there when your Mom's awake, and he'll drive you to the hospital."

"Dad, I can drive," Dean offered.

Not that he was eager to make this drive, but it seemed pointless to walk to Bobby's just so the guy could play taxi driver when there was a perfectly good working car sitting in the Winchester's driveway. Plus, Dean wanted his father to know he could count on him. He was holding it together and not falling apart like some sniveling little kid who needed a box of tissues and someone to play chauffer for him.

"No," John replied firmly. "You're not driving here."

That comment prompted a scoff of indignation from Dean. He didn't think there was any reason to worry about his driving when the only concern on the radar should be whether his mother would be spending the night in a coffin or a hospital bed. His father was treating him like some helpless fool, like a little kid that needed a keeper. All Dean could think was that the guy was willing to hand off his youngest son for Dean to care for but apparently he drew the line at keeping the car safe—and he said so.

"I know this is hard for you, but I'm expecting you to act responsibly and take this like a man, Dean," John said as his voice grew stiff. "You're dangerously close to letting me down right now. I am not worried about the car. This isn't about your driving experience, Dean. This is about me needing to keep my mind on what's important. Tonight, that doesn't include worrying about you and your brother being on the road."

The admonishment stung.

When the boys first returned home to their family, Dean bucked John's attempts to assert himself as an authority in his life; he fought John's demands for respect from his fiercely independent first-born. Since then, Dean had fallen into line with his father's need for order and discipline; he even found comfort in it when things were chaotic in his world. Giving John respect was one thing, but gaining it in return had been the real challenge. Hearing that he might have jeopardized that made the teenager wince with regret.

Still, Dean wasn't pleased with being essentially grounded and treated like he was Sam's age. He gnashed his teeth about it but felt ashamed of himself for that anger. After all, he had done it again, in a moment when his father needed him to step up and act like a man, he had instead turned into a selfish, whiny brat—or had at least managed to sound like one.

"Dean?" John prompted. "Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir," he replied dejectedly.

His head was still hanging low when they disconnected a few seconds later.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

In the corner of Mary's room was a small table stand where the overnight bag she had her nurse pack at the house sat. It was a faded pink satchel with large white flowers on it. John shook his head at it. His wife and frilly pink just didn't go together—at least, not the person she was now or had been for the previous decade. When he first met her, sure. Back then, she seemed demure and innocent.

If he had only known….

Actually, in retrospect, he was glad he hadn't known about her history with the shadowy side of life or her family's long hunting legacy. He would have thought her crazy or dangerous (and, to be fair, he did think she was a little of both now, but he found those traits appealing since her retirement from the stalking and slaying the dark beasts that roamed the land).

Still, the pink girly bag clashed greatly with her personality as Super Mom, the ringmaster who kept her kids and husband on their toes and the house in order. The bag, as much as the situation, brought a tear to John's eye as he looked at it. He was surprised when the nurse handed it to him to carry in the ambulance that day. He hadn't seen the bag in 12 years—not since they brought Sam home from the hospital. On that day, John had groused (just as he had four years earlier when she used it to haul her things home from the hospital as they came home with Dean) that the neighbors would see the pink bag and think his son was a girl. Mary wasn't worried. She said if anyone had doubts, she could strip the baby naked and show off his most Winchester of parts.

Thinking about that brought a sad chuckle to his chest as he opened the bag and dug around for the small address book she carried with her. In it, he knew there were all the policy numbers for their insurance, her social security number as well as the lists of all her medications. There were also phone numbers—for Sam's school and Dean's (should they be needed)—as well as her many other contacts she had gathered over the years, but it wasn't doctors or teachers that interested John at that moment. No, he was looking for a different sort of professional.

He needed to talk to a hunter.

One hunter in particular had come to mind as he spoke to Dean; one that had been helpful and friendly to him in the past; one who Mary trusted; and one who John hoped beyond all rational thought might be able to come through in the nick of time.

He thumbed through the pages until he found the entry he needed. Seeing Mary still unconscious, he kissed her dryly on the forehead, brushing the last wispy strands of her hair from her face before he stepped into the hallway.

One thing he had learned during the long waiting periods as Mary received her failed cancer treatments through the Spring was the layout of the hospital. He also knew the general ebb and flow of employees. The west side of the third floor, two floors up from his wife's room, was primarily doctor's offices. Doctors, John knew, didn't work past five most days (and never on days when the weather was warm and sunny). As he exited the back stairway, he could tell the golf course was likely full as the offices in this hallway were empty.

A few quick twists of a lock with a couple paperclips and he had slipped into a vacated office that conveniently had just what he needed: a phone.

He dialed and as his breath grew tight in his chest and his heart began thumping desperately hard while waiting for the party on the other end to answer. When he did, John sighed relief.

"Yeah," the voice answered.

"Caleb?" John began. "It's John Winchester. I need your help."

"Johnny?" Caleb replied. "What are you doing calling me? Last I heard, you were shacking up with the Missus again. There's no way you need my help if she's still got your stones in a mason jar on the counter."

John chuckled dryly in spite of his anxiety. Despite the jab, Caleb's friendly tone carried easily over the line.

"I need help for Mary," John said then launched into a hasty explanation of her condition, where he was and what he needed.

"You want what?" Caleb squawked. "Johnny, you don't know what you're saying. Look, have you talked to Bobby about this?"

"I'm talking to you," he replied. "Look, witches are human so it's not like I'm selling my soul here. I'm just asking for a spell or a talisman. Something that can undo what this disease has done to my wife. There has to be something. Voodoo or hoodoo, one of those. Caleb, you know more about this stuff than I do. You have to help me. This is Mary, we're talking about."

The hunter sighed. Nothing was a guarantee, but he also knew that was the number one reason to do whatever you could to keep good people around. Cancer might not be supernatural, but it was evil. It had taken his father long ago. Given the choice between wasting away like the old man did or meeting his end at the teeth of a werewolf, Caleb knew what he would chose without hesitation.

"Let me call someone I know," he said. "If anyone can help out, it'll be her. You hang tight and don't do anything unless you check with me."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _A/N:_** More to come…


	5. Chapter 5

**_oOoOoOo_**

Sam heard Dean climb the stairs and enter his room letting the younger boy know that whatever his father told him on the phone wasn't causing them to rush to the hospital. Sam felt a bit calmer about that. He had been sitting in his room, holding his breath, and doing his best not to cry. Dean knew more than he was saying, Sam was certain of that, but he wasn't yet acting suspiciously enough to make Sam fear the worst. That was one thing his older brother didn't realize: that Sam spent a fair amount of time watching Dean and studying him. Their father said Dean was hard headed; their mother said he was misunderstood; Bobby just called him an idgit.

They were each right and wrong, Sam felt. Dean was actually a genius. Sam was certain of it.

No one else seemed to think quite like Dean. He could look at a pile of junk on the floor and turn it into a machine or a game without any help or directions. He could read a book that teachers claimed was a masterpiece, but in five minutes of griping Dean could make it sound like the story was predictable and pointless. Dean knew how to get people to tell him things they shouldn't; how to get into places he wasn't allowed; and he knew (usually) just how far to push people before things got out of hand. Sometimes, he went too far and that's when their parents and Bobby's opinions of him got really accurate.

Still, Sam knew that as long as he kept a close watch on Dean, he would know before anyone told him if things were going horribly wrong for their mother. However, as Sam peeked out of his room down the hall toward Dean's room, he saw the door closed tightly. He perked up his ears to listen for any sounds that might help him learn more about what their father might have said on the phone, but all Sam heard was the dull thud of Dean dropping onto his bed. There was a faint, muffled sound after that which Sam could not identify; a sudden pang of worry made him fear it might be a sob, but the sound disappeared so quickly Sam pushed that idea out of his mind. Dean didn't cry, even when he was hurt. So, Sam's instinct after hearing the odd noise was to either call out and ask if Dean was okay or to just poke his head into Dean's room; however, Sam didn't want to anger his brother by bothering him in that instant.

For what little Sam heard of his conversation with their father, Dean sounded like Dad was mad at him. That never put Dean in a good mood. Even though Dean had spent most of Sam's childhood previously showing the world that he didn't care what any adult thought of him, that all changed no long after they came home to their parents. Dean still didn't care much what other grownups thought of him, but their parents and Bobby were the exceptions to that rule for him.

So, rather than agitate his brother, Sam set about doing what he started thinking about while at school. With everyone else doing whatever they could to help his mother, Sam felt like it was time he started pitching in to assist. To do that, he needed to first do some research. That meant he needed to get into the attic and find a particular book. Fortunately, the ceiling hatch with the drop-down ladder to access that narrow space at the top of the house was in Sam's room. He pushed his desk chair to the far wall and climbed up where he could grab the handle that released the door sunken into the ceiling. When the hatched dropped down, he extended the small folding ladder quietly for he was not permitted to go upstairs without his parents' permission.

Once in the dusty space above the bedrooms, Sam picked his way carefully over the floor, avoiding the small boxes and footlockers stashed up there. He had wondered for quite a while what might be in all of these items but each were locked. Dean had told him once he would teach his younger brother how to pick a lock but hadn't yet done so. Once he did, Sam was considering opening each locked compartment to take a peek, but for now he ignored them. The book he needed was hidden away but its hiding space was at the bottom of a simple cardboard box. Sam located it with ease as it was in the same spot as he saw it the previous fall when he took his first unsanctioned trip to the attic. He did so then just out of insatiable curiosity. His heart had nearly jumped out of his chest with fear an excitement as he did it. Once upstairs, he felt a lot less intrigued though as he found little more than locked boxes and dust. Nothing up there looked all that secret or tantalizing. Still, the thrill of having done something he shouldn't was exciting and (he felt) helped him understand his brother's occasional violations of rules a bit better. Sam was a little embarrassed and a little ashamed of himself to admit that being bad was a little fun.

However, fun was not what he was searching for that afternoon. No, what he needed was in a box with a silver cross, and a bottle of what seemed like plain water. Sam wasn't sure what all if it was for, but he figured his parents had moved around a lot when trying to find him and his brother so there was probably a lot of odd stuff in the boxes in the attic, things left over from all that moving. After sifting carefully through the box, he found the book. Sam wondered if using the cross in the box might also be helpful, but he hesitated to pick it up. It felt wrong to use it for something he didn't fully understand. After a moment of contemplation, he put it down and replaced the lid on the box. He then carefully picked his way down the ladder and closed the hatch.

He settled on his bed near the window so the sunlight fell on the pages in front of him and began flipping through the tome. He wasn't sure where to find what he was looking for as the book didn't have an index. He was disappointed in that but not dissuaded.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

John leaned on the wall just outside the admitting desk at the hospital. He had spent most of the day in the sickly green fluorescent lighting of the hospital and just needed to feel the sun on his face. Hell, even the sticky humidity of the late afternoon felt good as he pressed his back into the rough brick side of the building and closed his eyes. Mary wasn't showing any signs of waking yet, something he thought she should be doing by now. She just lay there in her bed looking sickly gray and hollow. He'd seen corpses dug up from their graves with better complexions.

He shook that thought from his mind. The world of hunting had brought with it enough horrific memories to last him a lifetime—and he'd only participated in a few dozen hunts over a 10 year stretch. Mary had lived the life since she was a child and only got her first break from it when she was just out of high school. The then-mysterious death of her parents gave her a reprieve. That opened the door for her to marry John and settle into what should have been apple pie and picket fence life.

That the universe didn't get that memo hardly seemed to matter anymore. The family she so desperately craved had saved her once and then done so again when she got it back after having it stolen from her for a decade. Now, there was nothing that family could do to save her a third time, which was why John was turning to her world, the reality of curses and hexes and things that scared the rest of the world into denying they existed. Caleb had left a message for John at the patient information desk an hour earlier. He was sending help. John was contemplating what that help might be when a short, balding man with Buddy Holly styled glasses poked his head out the door.

"Mr. Winchester," Dr. Bolton called to him. "I've been looking for you."

"Just needed some air," John shook his head as he turned toward Mary's doctor. "Is she awake? She didn't seem to be stirring yet so I thought I could step out unnoticed for a few minutes."

Bolton sighed and gestured toward the door for John to follow. He did so with a knot twisting in his gut. Bolton was good at delivering news without needing an interpreter to figure out what he was saying. He kept technical medical terms to a minimum and didn't dance around the hard subjects. Only this time, his expression said more than John was ready to hear.

"I'm afraid Mary has slipped into a coma," the doctor revealed. "I just did my rounds and found her insufficiently responsive to pain. I've ordered a few more tests, but I'm not hopeful they will tell us anymore than I know now. Her body is shutting down. I'm sorry, but I don't think she is going to wake up even if we cut back on the morphine, which I am not recommending. That, at least, is keeping her from feeling pain."

John scrubbed a shaking hand across the rising stubble on his chin. He felt a cold, hard lump in his throat and an icy fist squeeze his heart.

"You're telling me she's gone," he surmised in a low and gravelly voice.

"She's still alive," Bolton replied. "Her heart is still beating and she is still breathing on her own; although her respirations are slightly labored. I predict that will continue to degrade overnight. I know you have children. If you feel they can handle saying goodbye, I recommend getting them here this evening. I don't think she will be with us when morning arrives."

John inhaled painfully as he gripped the wall for support. His mind was blank. He didn't know if he should call Bobby to have him bring the boys instantly or if he should just sit with Mary and break the news to the boys in the morning. Letting them come see her just to say goodbye seemed cold as they would spend the night on death watch. Leaving them in the dark until she was gone seemed equally heartless.

John half heard Bolton offer him condolences again before the man drifted away, leaving John alone in the hallway. He wasn't sure how long he had stood staring blankly at the floor before a dark, fleshy hand with an amazing grip took hold of his elbow. He turned to see a pair of solemn amber eyes looking at him and almost through him.

"John Winchester," she began in a beseeching voice, "I'm Missouri Mosley. I need to talk to you."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

Dean lay on his bed, mostly. His head was now hanging over the edge as he stared at the floor feeling his blood rush forward and bring a reddish tinge to his pale face. He wanted to scream or to hit something (or both), but neither was advisable. If he started trashing his room, Sam would hear and get upset. If he went to the basement and started pounding on the heavy weight punching bag set up specifically for hitting, Sam would also get suspicious. Dean spent a fair amount of time punching, chopping and kicking the bag when he practiced Krav Maga, but right now he wasn't interested in a disciplined approach. Dean wanted to destroy something. If he ransacked the basement, there would be hell to pay later.

So he gripped the edge of his mattress and gnashed his teeth while holding in everything that wanted to spill out. Sam surely was listening carefully. The little guy was becoming quite the spy Dean had noticed—obviously taking a lesson from their mother in observing everything that was going on without seeming to do so.

As he considered that, his eye wandered to the small gap in the floorboards just where the shadow of his bed hit the floor. It was a small separation—one most would ignore as simple settling of an old structure that meant not all the supports were in complete alignment any longer. Considering the building had been erected a century earlier, that wasn't surprising. However, Dean knew it also wasn't the cause for the fissure—not exactly.

Sure, the slightly slanted aspect of his floor had first created the gap, but it was Dean who had exploited it. The reason for that was simply being grounded. He had run his mouth at an inappropriate moment not long after moving into the house and found himself in solitary confinement for a weekend with the order to pick up his room and have it orderly and spotless by Sunday evening. Dean had done so, bitching and grumbling throughout, but he also discovered something: the floorboards could be pried up with the right leverage from a switchblade (one his father hadn't confiscated from him yet). Back then, Dean still wasn't certain his parents were interested in keeping him so he had created a little runaway stash (just in case) in the void he discovered beneath his floor. At first, it had contained a few easy to grab food items, some fake student IDs from his time in Chicago and a small amount of cash. Later, when it became obvious his parents were going to watch over him like a warden because they fully intended to keep him as part of the family, he used it to store a few skin mags and his cash box—things he didn't want his parents and Sam knowing he had.

There was one more item in that spot, a book, a journal of sorts, that he came in possession of quite by accident the previous summer. It was old, like 20 years old, and was in Bobby's handwriting.

The journal had accompanied them on their ill-fated camping trip the previous summer and was in the bag that Dean grabbed when he and Sam hightailed it out of the campsite in flight from their lives the evening they were attacked.

He didn't realized he still had the book in the bag until the morning after they got home. His head was still throbbing from his concussion and his other aches were letting him know that falling down a ravine was not the preferred way to start summer vacation. He lingered in bed a bit longer than normal—that his parents let him do so was a testament to how much like crap he probably looked. Still, he knew he was a sight better than Sammy, who was laid up in bed with a broken leg. While contemplating his good fortune at getting his brother home in one (broken) piece, Dean reached for his bag in search of his portable CD player only to find the journal.

Even a year later, Dean wasn't entirely sure why he never returned it to Bobby. He knew it was probably because then he would have to confess that he knew that what chased them in the woods wasn't a bear. That would lead to him accusing Bobby of also knowing it wasn't a bear, and Dean wasn't ready to have that kind of discussion with his surrogate uncle. In fact, he already knew why Bobby told that lie; he did it to protect the boys. What confused and intrigued Dean was how much Bobby knew about the creature and why he knew it.

While he and Sam were separated from Bobby in the woods that night, believing him dead after the thing attacked their campsite, Dean had looked in the journal to a page Bobby had marked. On that page, Dean spied some odd symbols like Indian drawings. He had recognized them from some scratches he spied Bobby scraping in the dirt around their campsite while the boys ate dinner. From the other scribbles on the page with the drawings, the markings were allegedly wards—magical sigils to protect the spot from something dangerous. Dean had also dug those symbols into the dirt around where he and Sam had stopped for the night once they were alone. Whether they worked, Dean could not say. All he knew was that the creature did not come near them that evening.

So it was with a sense of dread and a thrill of possibility for what he might find that Dean opened the book again and started reading. After the first few sentences, Dean was certain that deep down Bobby was a raving lunatic.

After the first five pages, Dean also knew Bobby was a hero.

After another dozen pages into the book, Dean knew that his mother didn't need to die.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

"You're here to help me?" John shook his head as he finished listening to the round-faced woman standing in front of him.

They stood at the end of an empty hallway a few doors down from where his wife was slowly entering her eternal slumber. John wanted to be there beside Mary, but this newcomer had him both worried and curious.

"Did Caleb send you?" he asked desperately.

"I don't know anyone named Caleb," Missouri shook her head. "I came because you're wife called to me."

"My wife is in a coma," John said sternly as he huffed indignantly and started down the hall again. "She's been in bed for weeks and hasn't used the phone. You must have me mistaken for someone else."

Missouri caught hold of his arm and held tight. She shook her head and offered him a flat and unyielding expression that slowly softened as she saw the pain in his eyes and felt the same from his heart. She sighed in an understanding but perturbed way.

"She called **_to_** me," she said with emphasis. "I'm not talking about using AT &T. She reached out to me. Well, she reached out; I just happened to be listening. I'm from Lawrence, Kansas. That was your home at one time."

John nodded. It had been his home from age six to age 30—from not long after his father ran off to just after his children disappeared. Since taking to the road to search for them, John had not been back to the mid-west city. He had been considering a return trip with the boys. He learned the previous year during March Madness that both were fans of NCAA basketball, and (either oddly or coincidentally) their preferred basketball team was the Jayhawks, but those plans were put on hold when Mary got ill.

"Rock, chalk Jayhawk to you, too," Missouri said confidently quoting the battle cry for the team as she read his mind. "I know your children were taken from there a long time ago. Back then, I tried to tell the police they were looking in all the wrong places for them babies of yours, but no one would listen to me. I tried to tell you and your wife as well, but she was gone before I could get to her, and I never could get to you with all your friends trying so hard to help you."

John's jaw clenched, and he stared at her with hard, dark eyes. Psychics. He wasn't exactly a fan of them. Several came forward with information allegedly about his boys when they were missing. None proved helpful; years later when he did find them, he recalled that none of them even offered a clue that would have pointed him to their location in Chicago. Recalling that, his anger and his fear spiked at the mention of his sons' abduction.

"Take your phony help to someone willing to pay you for your lies," he said in a harsh whisper. "I know where my sons are. I don't need you to tell me that."

"I know where they are, too, walking across a field to a junkyard," she replied flatly. "That older one's got quite the mouth on him. I also know he didn't learn words like that from the priests at St. Procopious."

At that, John's jaw dropped. While knowing his oldest had a colorful vocabulary was hardly a state secret, no one other than the small team of hunters who stepped into to rescue the boys from their exile knew the name of the church that oversaw the orphanage Sam and Dean had called home. The fact that she also knew where they currently lived and its proximity to the salvage yard was also troubling.

"I'm not here to hurt your family," she assured him as she sensed his fear rise. "I'm here to help. Look, I you know about the things that live in the shadows—things most people never see unless it's the last thing they see. I also know that no man on this earth took your babies from their rooms. It was a powerful force that pulled them away from you. All those year, I couldn't sense where they were as they were hidden from me, but I knew they weren't dead. The dead I can find; those babies were just lost to everybody, and it was done on purpose."

John gaped as she offered him essentially the same details Bobby had pieced together in the previous years. Whoever took their sons had hidden them in a way that no searcher (supernatural or otherwise) could locate them. There were small and incomprehensible scratches in their ribs which the hunter had determined were in an ancient language called Enochian; when put together, the symbols created a sort of protection spell that hid the boys from all things supernatural and (apparently) worldly. As far as John knew, other than his wife, Bobby was the only person on the planet who knew about that.

Except, he reminded himself, whoever (or whatever) had taken them in the first place.

"I'm not here to discuss the past with you," Missouri said. "I'm here to warn you about the present. You found your boys, and you've done right by them, but they need you now more than ever. You need to protect them. Something dark is coming."

"Their mother is dying," John said. "I can't protect them from that."

Missouri sighed and shook her head.

"Mary knows this is her time," she replied. "She called out for someone to tell you that all she wants and needs from you now is to let her go and to be the father that her babies need you to be."

"And what's this dark thing that's coming for them?" he asked aggressively. "Did she know it was coming, or did it do this to her?"

He hated thinking his wife kept something like that from him, except there was precedent for it. She never told him about hunting and her family tradition involving it until after something reached out and took a bite out of their family. Deep in his heart, he doubted Mary would have kept quiet again if something was that threatening their family, but his mind told him the only way to be certain was to ask.

Missouri turned her soulful eyes to him and clasped one of his hands in hers. Her face wrinkled in pain for the aches within his heart. She sighed softly as she shook her head consolingly.

"This sickness is just something that grew in her, like it does so many others," Missouri explained. "It's a terrible thing, but it's natural. As for what's coming next, she has no idea about it. I'm telling you about it because I sense it coming, like a great storm brewing on the horizon and heading this way. It's an evil presence—darker than anything I've ever felt before, John. You need to keep your boys close and protect them, or I fear you will lose one of them tonight."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _A/N:_** _More to come…_


	6. Chapter 6

**_oOoOoOo_**

Bobby stood in his kitchen looking across his yard and the far field beyond it. Two figures came into view a few hundred yards off still. They were making slow progress in his direction. Unlike their normal treks to his place, there was no racing. No rambunctious on-the-run wrestling match in progress. There was no animated hand gestures as one enthralled the other with some story that could only be told far from adult ears and questions.

What he saw was two boys scuffing through the shin-high grass with shoulders slumped and heads hung low. He felt for the brats. He didn't fully understood their sorrow. His father started his dirt nap when Bobby was about Sam's age, and Bobby was the one who shut that abusive bastard's eyes. His mother passed on half a dozen years later; he felt more guilt than grief over that. Still, Bobby knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. He couldn't even bear to see a picture of his wife, Karen, for the pain of her death still too sharp. He lost more than a wife the day she died. He lost his sense of security and the generally pleasant cloud of ignorance that most people get to live surrounded by their whole lives; Bobby had to face life without the woman who was his heart and learned that the dark was indeed something to fear all in the same day.

Fortunately for the boys, they were only facing half of that equation.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Bobby knew before he even lifted the receiver who it was.

"I've got eyes on them right now, John," Bobby said calmly rather than ' _hello_.' "They just left your place a minute ago. They're dragging their feet to get here, but they're on their way. How's Mary?"

"Do you know someone named Missouri Mosely?" he asked instead of answer. "She claims she's a psychic from Lawrence. She came here with a… a… warning. She said the boys are in danger."

Bobby's ears perked to that offering. He sharpened his gaze on the two boys as they continued to make their way toward his home. There was nothing around them that he could see and neither appeared to be ailing in anyway. The land surrounding the Winchester home was consecrated, which offered a good deal of protection from a lot of evil crap, but the Salvage Yard wasn't so well secured. Sure, Bobby had a few things in place but he also knew that warding a place that wasn't normally a sanctuary often had the opposite effect, drawing nasty critters to the borders to see what was being protected inside.

"From what?" Bobby asked.

"She doesn't know," John huffed. "At first, I thought Caleb sent her."

"Caleb?" Bobby questioned. "Why would you think that? Caleb don't like psychics; doesn't trust most of them because he thinks they're frauds."

"I thought so, too, but this lady seems to be the real thing," John replied. "I called Caleb earlier to ask for… help."

Bobby kept the growl in his throat quiet as Ellen's warning came back to him. It figured that John would try something and, in his stubborn jackass way, avoid asking the one man in 500 square miles that would have the right answer him. Instead, he'd gone to Caleb, a competent hunter but also someone who often relied on Bobby for most of his research.

"What kind of help was he giving you?" Bobby asked rather than debate the sanity of John asking for assistance in the first place.

"I asked for a spell or a talisman, something to save Mary," he confessed. "I know she said she didn't want to be saved by anything supernatural, but I don't care. She doesn't want to be saved that way, but she also doesn't want to die. One overrides the other."

Bobby sighed. Given the chance to change places with John and become a husband who knew about fighting evil before his wife died, Bobby wouldn't have hesitated. He felt like a hypocrite judging John for being able to do what he himself couldn't. Still, he knew the rabbit hole on something like this was dark and deep.

"I'll talk with him," Bobby said cryptically. "If he's got anything, I'll take care of it. Now, what's this Mosley woman got to say?"

"She said something is coming after the boys," John replied. "Bobby, Mary's in a coma. The doctor doesn't think she's got many hours left. I need to be here with her."

"You want me to explain anything to the boys as I drive them to you?" he asked.

The last thing he wanted to do was be the one delivering that sort of devastating news, but he figured he might have an easier time of it than John would. His relationship with the boys was not precisely that of a parent but slightly more than just an uncle.

"No, I don't want them here for this," he said. "Tell them she's still sleeping and that they'll see her tomorrow."

"John," Bobby sighed with disappointment. "Let them say goodbye while they can still delude themselves into thinking she heard them."

"No," he insisted. "I don't want them to know she's essentially gone. They can sleep one more night thinking their mother is still here with us. Besides, if this Mosely woman is right, they could be in danger. I'd rather they were with you at your place where they'll be protected."

Bobby had opposing feelings about the twists in this discussion. He thought John was flat out wrong keeping his boys from their final goodbye. The guy might think he was protecting his kids, but Bobby feared he was just opening a chasm of anger and regret their father might never bridge. Next, he felt a swell of kinship and pride. John had basically turned over his sons to the hunter, entrusted him with their lives. It was something he never thought John Winchester would do again following a nearly deadly camping excursion the year before that got crashed by a 200-year-old Wendigo. While that encounter had been a mostly unavoidable accident, specifically putting the boys under his care and protection when he believed a bid bad something or other was on the prowl was as much a vote of confidence and trust has Bobby had ever received.

"Nothing's going to get at them on my watch," Bobby said. "I'll keep them here for the night. You call when you think the time is right."

Bobby disconnected with a sigh as he watched the boys draw nearer. Dean's arm was now casually draped over his little brother's shoulders as they shuffled down the corridor of junk cars piled high. The little one's head was down and his floppy hair was falling in his eyes as he moped along. Bobby shouted out the window for them to meet him in the back car bay where he needed their help. As they slowly turned and altered their course, Bobby lifted the phone and dialed a hunter not too far away.

"Yeah, this is Caleb," the man answered through what sounded like a mouth full of chips.

"You dumbass," Bobby barked. "I ought drive to Nebraska and kick your ass myself. What the hell were you thinking when John called you?"

"Bobby?" the other hunter chuckled. "Is this about what Johnny asked me to do earlier?"

"No, it's about you renewing your subscription to Dumbass Weekly," Bobby snarled. "What did you promise him? No hoodoo is going to pull Mary back from the brink. When your stupid plan fails, she will come back and haunt your ass—and I'll let her do it!"

There was an uncomfortable chuckle on the other end of the line. Bobby seethed for several heavy moments before there was a response.

"Calm down," Caleb said in any uneasy way. "Look, I already sent Olivia Lowry to drop off a package to Johnny at the hospital since she was closer than I am."

"Olivia?" Bobby seethed. "I've got to stop her. What fool thing are you trying to pull?"

Caleb halted the man from hanging up as he pleaded with him to let the delivery and the so-called spell take place. Bobby's jaw locked tight as he tried to think if he dared call the sheriff's department and make a report believable enough to have Olivia arrested before she got to the hospital. She'd try to kill him the next time she saw the older hunter, but he didn't think there was any other choice.

"Just let this happen," Caleb insisted. "Bobby, I thought this through and this is the solution to your problem—John's too."

"My problem?" Bobby repeated. "John's problem is life happened; part of that is dying. Nothing you can do, nothing sane or wise anyway, to fix this."

"You're not thinking of the right problem," Caleb explained. "I'm sending Johnny the Star of Astaroth along with the incantation to read while he puts the thing under Mary's pillow. I dictated it to Olivia myself, and she's going to tell him that this is the only thing that might work but that it's also hell of a long shot."

Bobby's face scrunched in confusion. Olivia was hunter who lived not far from Sioux Falls. She specialized in ghosts. She didn't know much about charms or spells, not yet anyway, but she was learning. He thought it odd that Caleb would send someone unfamiliar with them to assist John with something as dangerous as a talisman and spell—particularly one Bobby didn't even know.

"What the hell is the Star of Astaroth?" he asked. "That's no hoodoo I ever heard of; what's its origin?"

"Uh, Disney," Caleb confessed. "It's from one of their old movies. I don't recall the title, but it has people and cartoons; there's a flying bed and Germans."

"What?" the grizzled hunter asked.

"It's a rouse, Bobby," Caleb explained. "Johnny sounded desperate. I didn't want him getting himself in a mess by monkeying with stuff he doesn't understand and can't control. I didn't know Mary was sick like this, but I'm certain she wouldn't want him playing around with spells and counter curses to try and keep her alive. Johnny's not thinking straight so I thought I'd help him out. I'd never send him something that could hurt him or cause him more trouble. This is just something he'll think is real but isn't. I figured I'd let him take a safe longshot—this way he'll feel at least like he tried everything."

Bobby sighed. He should have known Caleb wouldn't do something reckless, particularly where John Winchester was concerned. The two men had hunted together several times in the past. Unlike most other hunters who ever encountered John Winchester, Caleb actually liked the gruff former Marine.

"Well, I guess that makes me this week's centerfold for Dumbass Weekly," Bobby relented with an apologetic sigh. "Did you take your incantation from the movie dialogue, or did you make it look like something real? John's a smart guy. As I recall, he's pretty good with Latin."

"I remembered that, which is why I used Greek instead," his fellow hunter chuckled slightly. "I was involved with this girl once; her grandmother was Greek. She told me the old lady used to sing her this lullaby about a lamb; I gave some of those words to Olivia, or what they sounded like, for the note. It'll sound good, but it won't do anything."

Bobby thanked the man then disconnected with the assurance that the words had no magical power attachment to them and the "star" Caleb was sending was nothing more than a piece of agate from the collection Olivia kept on her dresser. Bobby didn't ask how Caleb knew what she kept there. He also promised to help sell the lie to John if needed by giving him some made up history on the power of the magical crystal and its alleged healing powers.

But that was a task for later if John called for help or with an updates.

For now, Bobby needed to convince the boys that there was no news and keep their minds of wondering when their father would call with some.

He also needed to keep an eye on something evil but unspecified that might be lurking around for the Winchester boys. Normally, Bobby wouldn't put much stock into the words of an untested psychic, but this was the Winchester boys. History dictated that unlikely and impossible were vastly different concepts when it involved them.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

John held the damp piece of paper in his hands. It quivered slightly as his hand shook while he skimmed the instructions just delivered to him. He had recently received it from Olivia Lowry, who he knew a bit from a case long ago. He was surprised to see her. He would have thought it more likely she would do a favor for Bobby than Caleb—John always thought she had a thing for Bobby. She wasn't much for talking when she did arrive. She simply handed John the package and a note with Caleb's instructions then left quickly. John glad Missouri not around during the exchange. In fact, he wasn't where she went anymore than he was certain about her offerings.

Still, that was another hurdle to tackle after he ministered to Mary.

His wife lay very still in the bed. She looked small and frail. Her skin was a ghastly shade of gray; dark circles scarred the hollows of her eyes. Her cheekbones protruded showing off her skeleton. Her chest would rise and fall shallowly and slowly with each agonizing respiration. He touched her cheek and felt the barely discernable warmth. With a sigh of finality, he pulled the shiny, flat stone with the star-like burst in the center out of Caleb's package. He slipped the stone under his wife's pillow then began reciting the strange words on the note in his fingers.

He folded the page then tucked it in his pocket. He pulled up a chair as the evening's long rays began to fade and darkness began to fall. John clasped his wife's limp hand and began to pray for his wife, his sons and himself.

 _ **oOoOoOo**_

The early evening at Bobby's disappeared, much like the sun on the horizon. Dean had been quiet—something he rarely was when he was at the Salvage Yard. Sam often got annoyed (and certainly bored) whenever Dean was within eyeshot of his "car," or as Sam thought of it: that pile of scrap Dean liked more than any person on the planet. His older brother was usually full of questions and litany of plans fr what would happen in the future with the mess of parts.

That's how it was normally anyway.

Not this day. Dean had started working on something under the hood. Sam wasn't sure what that thing was because for once Dean wasn't chattering about it. He didn't seem to want to talk at all. Sam was fine with that to a point, but eventually he started to feel like he was being ignored. With a pointed sigh, Sam scuffed his feet on the gravel and headed into the house. Neither boy had been interested in eating either at home nor at Bobby's. They were interested in TV or even a movie. Alone seemed to be what both preferred. Luckily, Bobby seemed to understand that. Sam figured the man knew more than he was saying and so was Dean. That became obvious when Dean didn't seem antsy waiting for the call from their father.

"Hey, Uncle Bobby," Sam asked cautiously as he spied him looking out the kitchen window staring into the yard where Sam had formerly stood with his brother. "Can I go downstairs?"

"Downstairs?" Bobby asked. "What do you want to do in a dusty, cluttered basement?"

Sam shrugged. What he needed was a space where no one would interrupt him. He had a plan, help he could provide, but he needed to be alone where no one would distract him. The lack of questions from Dean or information from Bobby about his mother told Sam that he needed to ac and do so quickly.

"Well, I've got a bit of a project going on down there," Bobby said as he scrubbed a hand across his neck.

It was something of a busy-work project but also something Bobby felt was a good investment, in the sense that saving your own neck and anyone you cared about was valuable. He'd begun creating a bunker of sorts, a panic room that would eventually be warded against the worst of the big bads that roamed the land. It would be an iron-plated safe room with the walls coated in salt and protection sigils etched into the panels. So far, all he'd done was get the walls plated and the door frame welded. Still, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense that the boy would be safe down there (in keeping with his father's wishes for protection that night).

"Okay, but don't go building a nuclear reactor or digging a hole to China," Bobby nodded. "And stay out of all those boxes I got down there. I don't want you finding out that I wear women's clothing when no one's around."

Sam offered him his best doubting look then smirked. He lifted his backpack, the one he dragged with him across the field when he and Dean arrived, then nodded his thanks as made his way to the basement. The stairs wobbled a bit and the light from the cobweb encrusted bulbs cast odd shadows in the cluttered space. Sam didn't mind. He just need a quiet place to get organized and get started. He moved to the dark corner on the west quadrant of the cellar figuring something like this was better if the setting was more somber and reflected the gloom he was feeling inside.

 _ **oOoOoOo**_

Dean could feel Bobby's stare on the back of his neck. The man was 30 yards away in the house and was laser focused on him. That meant Sam must be in the house with him now. Dean felt better about that. He was worried when the little guy was shadowing him that he'd need to pick a fight with the kid to make him leave.

His little brother was obviously worried and agitated at the fact that their father hadn't called. Dean took that for what it was: bad news but not the worst news. Dean suspected their mother hadn't woken up and that, he shuddered with the realization, the doctors were now sure she wouldn't. Their father was probably in her room having decided to spare his sons the sight of their mother dying, as if that somehow was going to make this easier. Dean wasn't sure that seeing her would be a good thing for him or Sam. He knew he didn't want to see his mother draw her last breaths, but he was just as certain he didn't want her to die at all.

It was that desire that also made it a necessity for Dean to not have Bobby staring at him. Dean had made it a point not to do anything that might make Bobby feel like he needed to babysit both boys. Dean needed some alone time and some space. There were things on his mind he was not in the mood to share. Which was why he had worked out in his head a means to get this privacy without raising any alarms with Bobby… or the guy even suspecting that Dean was no longer under his watchful eyes.

So he put his plan into motion.

The first thing he did was rub the heels of his hands into his eyes hard. He felt the pressure from the contact and the grit from the dust on the car. He felt his eyes protest and smart instantly. Dean blinked away the dryness it caused and felt the hint of strategic moisture and did nothing to hide it. Next he took a deep breath and apologized to his almost-car before abruptly stepping toward the passenger door the kicking the panel.

He then swore loudly and thrust his fisted hands into his pockets. He stalked to the house sporting and ugly scowl. He let the door crash behind him as he stepped into the kitchen then turned a failed calm expression to meet Bobby's questioning gaze.

"You need anything?" Bobby asked as he spied what looked like tears in the teen's eyes.

"My bag," Dean growled and lifted the small duffle he lugged with him to the house.

Bobby raised an eyebrow at that then nodded as Dean reached inside and revealed the corner of the automotive book he bought the kid for his birthday—a useful gift for learning how to build an engine and probably the only book the kid ever read without an assignment.

"Maybe you need to let the car sit for now," Bobby suggested.

"I'm not working on it," Dean said tensely as he shoved the book back into the bag and started toward the door gripping the handles tightly. "I just wanted to… I just want to look up stuff."

"It's dark out there," Bobby noted.

"I think better in the car," Dean said, purposefully not looking at the man then rubbing an arm across his eyes in a forcefully causal motion.

That, Dean knew from Bobby's sigh, sold it.

"Okay," he said. "You go and figure things out. I'll be here if you've got any questions."

Dean looked up with honest guilt in his eyes at deceiving the man. He nodded his thanks and started out the door. He stole a quick look at his watch and noted the time. He figured he would need about 10 minutes more before Bobby stopped looking at him through the window constantly.

Once back at the car, Dean crawled into the front. He turned the rearview mirror toward the house where he could see Bobby silhouetted in the window by the kitchen light. Then Dean did a quick inventory of the bag. He left the engine book on the seat and pulled out Bobby's journal. He turned to the page that had interested him all afternoon. He looked at the notes there and compared them to what he had in the bag—items he lifted from the various cupboards and closets at Bobby's house while the guy was out in the yard with Sam not long after they arrived. He was a little revolted to find the small animal skull he needed stashed in a box in the upstairs linen closet but, knowing what he knew of Bobby now, he wasn't surprised. He had all the pieces, including some wilting yellow flowers from behind the garage and Dean's old student ID from Chicago, now stashed in an old candy tin he found in drawer at Bobby's as well.

A second glance toward the house revealed Bobby was no longer watching Dean from afar. He looked at his watch again. He figured he had at most 20 minutes to hightail it to his destination, do what needed to be done, and return before he was in the danger zone for Bobby wanting to check in on him.

Dean slipped out of the car and, keeping low and to the darker shadows, picked his way through the salvage yard and to the abandoned access road at the back of the property. Once there, he raced toward a spot where that trail intersected with an old farming road. The trees encroached in that spot, shielding it from the main road and from anyone who might be looking in this direction from the few spots where this area was visible.

With his heart racing, Dean tossed his bag on the ground and dug out his tin o'weird crap. He kicked at the center where the two lanes crossed, digging a divot in the soft dirt. He then fell to his knees and scraped out a larger hole with his hands. He planted the tin with his photo and other items in the hole and covered it.

"Alright," Dean whispered to himself as he brushed his hands on his jeans. "Time to find out if Bobby's freaky or just crazy."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _A/N:_** More to come…


	7. Chapter 7

**_oOoOoOo_**

The swelling darkness pressed in and squeezed out all sound. Dean felt clammy as a shiver ran down his spine despite the moderate temperatures of the evening. The eerie stillness set his nerves on edge as even the night's mosquitoes seemed to flee. Dean exhaled slowly as he felt his muscles grow tense as he adopted a cagey stance, but as the silence and the solitude lingered his patience grew thin.

"Okay, this was a total waste," Dean murmured to himself as he clenched his jaw in anger. "Guess Bobby is nine kinds of crazy after all."

He huffed slightly, feeling both foolish and relieved. He should have known the journal was just some lunatic ravings, but part of him wanted to believe… needed to believe in it. His mother's life depended on it. Only now…

"My, my, my," a girl's voice purred in his ear making Dean jump. "Aren't you just adorable enough to eat? You're like a cookie. I just want to give you a nibble."

He turned abruptly to find a teenage girl, not much older than him, with sleek black hair and vivid blue eyes standing behind him. She wore a tight, sleeveless black dress that was cut high on the knee and slit dangerously up the thigh. As she strolled around him, he spied there was very little to the back of the garment as well.

"Whoa," Dean gasped. "Where did you come from?"

"Your wildest dreams," she winked.

"I'll say," Dean swallowed nervously as he tried to look a lot less scared than he felt until her jewel-toned eyes swiftly flared a shiny, blazing red. "What the hell!?"

"Ooo, Sugar," the demon grinned. "Got it right out of the gate. You're not a dumb one are you? What can I do for you, Dean Winchester?"

He blinked several times as he tried to shake the senseless buzzing in his ears while trying to keep his thoughts straight. Unlike the monster he saw in the forest, this woman wasn't bad to look at but somehow he felt she was much more dangerous.

"You know me?" he asked tightly.

"That's my job," she leaning seductively toward him. "You called me. I did my homework on the way; although that graffiti you're wearing made a little _hard_."

He didn't know what she was talking about but chanced a glance at his bare arms anyway. There were no markings there that he could see. As she gazed back, he felt vulnerable and slightly dirty (and not in a good way). Dean swallowed hard and blinked as he shook his head to make sure he was in fact seeing and hearing what was in front of him. The previously humming-insect filled air had gone eerily quiet upon her arrival. He felt a bit cold and clammy standing in front of her.

"What, um, what are you?" he asked, again partially hoping that Bobby's crazy scribblings were some nonsensical rambling or part of some stab at writing a novel and partly hoping they were every bit as true as Dean needed them to be.

"Me?" she grinned as she sauntered slowly around him, dragging a perfectly manicured red nail gently along his jawbone. "I'm your salvation, Dean. I'm the answer to your, well, not prayers, but I am here to make your wishes come true. I'm like your genie in a bottle. You've popped my cork so now let see if we can pop yours."

Dean remained stock still, hoping his lower regions didn't give him away for how intriguing he found this moment despite the terror radiating from his bones. He forced himself to breath slowly and ignore the tight knot forming in his chest that was telling him to run away and do it fast.

"I don't care about my… whatever, right now…. I guess," he shook his head as he struggled to keep his head straight. "Look, I read in a book that you can… fix things. Make 'em better."

"It's what I live to do," she said in a breathy fashion while standing close and nuzzling his neck in a way he felt more high school girls should learn—fast. "My entire existence is predicated on providing for the needs of those worthy enough to ask for what they want most. What is it you want, Dean? Hot set of wheels? To bang the head cheerleader?"

Dean paused and considered the offer. It was tempting, but he fully intended to build his dream car and the current head cheerleader was Molly Benway—someone who, rumor had it, was not hard to get. He didn't consider himself novice with girls, but he also didn't think Molly presented that much of a challenge even for a sophomore. Also, he reminded as he shook his head clear, he had other concerns on his mind that night, specifically another beautiful blond who he actually loved.

"No, I want my mother to get better and to live," he said in a rush.

A calm, perhaps even sympathetic look graced the face of the creature in front of him. Her bottom lip jutted out slightly as she tilted her head to the side and sighed.

"Oh, not asking for yourself, huh?" she said. "This is a virgin moment for me. I've never had a request like that. It feels… _righteous_."

A grin swiftly flared on her face and was gone in a blink.

"You know, that's impressive to me, Dean," she commended him. "I'm not just saying that. I'm truly moved. Trust me, considering what I've seen in my life that practically makes you saintly. It also makes this your lucky day. It just so happens that I have a special, once in a lifetime deal for just this kind of request."

Dean shook his head and sighed explosively as he glanced at his watch. The hour was stretching toward 9:30. His father would have the county sheriff out looking for him if he didn't return soon. Not that it would take him long to locate Dean seeing as the sheriff's son was zonked out in the driver's seat of a "borrowed" patrol car.

"I don't care about specials or whatever," Dean said. "I need a goddamn miracle so tell me: Can you cure my mom?"

The grin returned, a serpentine smirk that narrowed her eyes, which again flared red, to narrow slits.

"You bet your sweet, tight ass I can," she promised. "I mean, I can't perform a miracle—that's the other team's gig—but what I can do is kill something."

"I didn't ask you to kill anything," Dean seethed. "I asked you to…."

"I can take the life of what's killing her," she cut him off. "Cancer, is it? I can…"

She waved her hand in the air. The space between them shimmered like some high tech illusion spun by a magician. Dean's eyes dazzled with the effect as his chin dropped slightly.

"…make it a thing of the past," the woman continued. "I can't do it exactly overnight—that would draw the wrong kind of attention."

"She's not going to make it through tonight," Dean pleaded, his desperation dripped from his words like the tears his eyes would not spill.

"She will," the woman nodded. "I'm just letting you know that 'remission' is a process. This isn't some phony faith healing in a tent where the lame suddenly throw down their crutches then moonwalk across the stage. I'll take care of her cancer for you, but it'll a few months before it's all gone. After that, she'll be like she was before that rotten old tumor ever started."

Dean listened to the words carefully. His gut was knotting, telling him to be wary and that this was too good to be true. A few of the reading assignments Phelps had given him during the year came back to him—stories teaching lessons about things that were too good to be true; while none of those tales ever seemed to have anything to do with his history classes (and therefore seemed like pointless assignments to the student), Dean had pondered a few of them. However, in this instant, what he thought didn't matter and what he felt in his gut didn't either. It his heart, the fact that is was breaking at the idea of losing his mother, which was speaking to him the loudest in that instant.

"And she'll never get cancer again?" Dean asked, applying one of things he did learn from those extra assignments.

"Never," the woman shook her head firmly.

"A different one won't take its place?" he questioned. "There's no fine print on this deal that says you take the cancer but she gets sick with something else or gets hit by a bus the day she's cured? I know a thing or two about contracts screwing people over."

To be honest, what Dean knew was mostly from TV, but in his estimation nighttime TV, lawyer contracts, and demons didn't seem all that far apart to him on the evolutionary scale.

The demon smiled and wagged one of her long talons at him.

"I heard you weren't all that dumb behind those pretty eyes and high cheekbones," she remarked. "No, Dean. No tricks. No scams. That's not how we play this game—we're not lawyers. My kind have something called integrity. Do you really think we'd still be in business after all these years if we screwed our clients the way, say, the government does? No. So, I guarantee you that once this cancer is gone, you mother will live to a nice old age and die peacefully in her sleep, the way all good mothers should."

His heart began fluttering. This was too good to be true, but he saw no reason to stop his quest for the answer and the result he so desperately wanted and needed. The rational part of his mind was telling him this was all so weird dream and that he was going to wake up on the couch with some half-rate scifi movie rolling credits on the TV while Sam snored in the armchair opposite the couch as they waited for their father to come home with terrible news. And yet this moment felt too vivid to be a dream. Magic, or whatever this so-called demon could do, wasn't supposed to be real; then again, neither was that 8-foot tall man-lizard that tried to eat him and Sam the previous summer in the forest.

"So you'll do it?" he asked.

The demon hesitated and grimace slightly.

"Well, I don't work for free," she shrugged. "I mean, I'm not an angel after all. See, I have a bottom line to meet, quotas to fill."

Dean's shoulders drooped and his chin sunk to his chest in defeat. _There it is_ , he thought with despair, _that's what made this a Dean Winchester solution: the imminent failure part._

"I don't have any money," he said in a quiet and dejected voice as he started to turn away.

"Oh, Sweet Cheeks, no," she laughed. "I'm not looking for that kind of payment. No, Babycakes, my fee won't cost you a dime."

Dean spun on his heel to face her again. His eyes grew wide and a tremble shot through his limbs as the thrill of a second chance made the air feel electric.

"What then?" he asked.

"Baby, I just want your soul," she smiled.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

The silence from the basement was growing suspicious. Bobby eyed the closed door carefully as he contemplated his next move. He cast an eye briefly toward the car in the yard and saw a small flashlight's beam illuminating the inside. Bobby doubted Dean was out there reading, but he decided the teen could use some time solo with his thoughts (and probably the damned up tears the hunter saw in his eyes earlier). It was the younger Winchester who needed a pair of eyes on him at that moment.

Quietly, being strategic about avoiding the third step, Bobby descended into the basement. The room was mostly dark as the lighting down there was bad on a good day. But it wasn't the dark so much as the continued quiet that worried Bobby. Kids, not even the contemplative Sam Winchester, played this quietly (and to be honest, Bobby had never seen Sam play at all unless it involved some activity with his brother and those instances were never quiet). As he reached the bottom step, he looked around the space and saw a flickering light in the far corner. He picked his way in that direction and had his breath stolen by what he found.

He'd seen a lot in his years. Dead men crawling out of their graves; ghosts haunting the places where they died; monsters shredding people in the darkness with vicious teeth and fangs, but nothing prepared him for this.

He knew he was not the first to watch this kind of sight. Plenty of people did this sort of thing, but to see that child, that little boy, on his knees with his hands clasped so tight his fingers were turning purple, struck the old hunter silent as he watched the little boy pray.

Sam had a lot of reasons not to believe in God. The little critter was snatched from his crib when he was still in diapers. He was spirited away from his family for reasons he would never know or understand. He was tossed into a foster care system that treated him like a shabby piece of furniture. He was neglected and forgotten by everyone the State paid to be his family. The kid had every reason to not believe in an almighty good force in the universe, one that brought comfort to the bereaved and relief to those in pain.

Yet there he was locked tightly in prayer at the front of the hospital chapel, looking for divine help to save his Mom.

With misty eyes and a heavy heart, Bobby placed his hand on the boy's small shoulder. Sam gasped and turned startled and reddened eyes to look at his surrogate uncle.

"You had me worried," Bobb said softly as he gestured to the open Bible and small candles on the floor in front of the knelling child. "Didn't know what you might be doing down here all by your lonesome. What's all this about?"

Sam shrugged in a timid yet guilty fashion.

"No one is saying anything to me, but I know what's happening," Sam replied in a small voice. "Mom's dying and everyone thinks there's nothing more anyone can do to stop it, but I can't believe that. We just found her no so long ago. I'm not ready for her to go away and I was thinking that all the doctors have done what they can, but maybe no one had tried this yet so I came down here to try..."

"Praying?" Bobby offered but from what he could see it was fairly obvious.

"Yeah," Sam swallowed hard. "I was asking God to please make my Mom get better and cure her."

Bobby nodded as he felt a lump rise in his throat. He didn't want to break the little termite's heart further by telling him what he was doing was pointless. After all, Bobby had met an angel, the real deal with wings and cocky attitude; since then, Bobby had never had so little faith the big daddy divine guardian of the universe. Bobby had discarded his thoughts on summoning Gabriel to perform a miracle for Mary. Double-O Halo barely lifted a feather to save the boys from a Wendigo a year earlier. If he had any intention or inclination to help the family again, he'd surely have done it already. Bobby wasn't sure if getting a face-to-face refusal would end so well for either of them. He was pretty sure that the defunct member of the God Squad drop out could roast him into a lump of charcoal with a snap of his stubby fingers; then again, Bobby also couldn't be sure he himself wouldn't try to barbeque the ass monkey's wings with holy oil if he refused to help. Détente in the form of avoidance seemed the best course all things considered.

"I don't know much about prayers, Sam," Bobby said, trying to help the kid understand that whatever happened next wasn't going to be his fault. "I've been told that God has his reasons for everything. I think it's a fine thing that you love your mother enough to do this, but maybe God had his reasons what's happening and those might include ending her suffering forever."

Sam hung his head. He figured it was too much to hope that the prayers of one little kid would get any notice coming from a world where it seemed like everyone was suffering and in need. Still, that didn't mean he shouldn't try. And even if Bobby was right, there was more in his prayers than just asking for help for his mother.

"Do you think God has plans for my Dad and Dean?" Sam asked curiously with a shade of fear tinging his words. "I was praying for them, too. God might want to take Mom to heaven, but Dad and Dean are going to need someone to watch over them the way she always did. I was praying that if she has to go to Heaven that God would let Mom become an angel so she could still do that."

Bobby smiled sadly then gave his shoulder a slight squeeze as the boy brushed a tear from his eye with the back of his hand.

"I don't think that's how it works," Bobby replied, glad the little boy didn't know what jackasses angels were and how little they cared about people. "But that's a nice sentiment. I think that if God thinks your Daddy and brother need an angel, he'll make sure they have one. But maybe they won't need one; they've got each other and they've got me. Oh, and we've all got you. That's pretty good in my book."

Sam nodded then leaned into Bobby's as tears started to dribble liberally down his cheeks.

"You and me are gonna have a big job," Sam offered in a tight and uneven voice.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

Dean stood still in the heavy evening hair with her words ringing in his ears. They sounded foreign to him, as if she has spoken another language. He let them roll around in his brain for several long moments until he was certain he had heard them correctly.

"My soul?" he repeated.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Let me guess. You never even considered that you had one until I mentioned it, did you? Not a religious kind of guy, am I right? Well, then it can't be that you'll miss it much. Good for you, I guess. You might say it's a hell of a deal."

She grinned in a way that would have been enticing if not for the flare in her eyes; they gave the toothy smile a cold and calculating shade.

"I don't know," Dean replied skeptically. "I never thought about it."

"Which means you never use it," she encouraged. "Therefore, it's got no value to you, but where I come from, that's what keeps the lights on, so to speak. Now, I'm very reasonable with my payback plans. You're 16, right?"

Dean nodded. He reached that milestone the previous January. It had been a triumphant accomplishment because along with it came the ability to get a driver's license. At the time, it was what he wanted most in the world. Now, he couldn't remember why that seemed so important.

"Well, then we can do business," she replied. "See, where I come from, that means you reached the age of capacity." Dean stared blankly at her. "You can thank the advent of the whole Latchkey Kid phenomena for that. See, it used to be that kids were cared for until they were 18, then you all went and got independent early, taking care of siblings and yourself long before any other generation had to so we go the rules changed—and we did it all for you. What I'm saying is that our rule say you're free to make your own choices about your life, like what to do with your soul."

Dean nodded. He considered himself independent. Free? Not so much. He lived with Atilla the Marine and a mother who ran an intel network on her kids that would shame the CIA. Or… she had until she got sick.

"How do you get it?" he asked hesitantly. "Is it painful?"

He felt a little foolish asking. After all, he didn't really think he had a soul, that they were real, until this freak of nature with the red eyes assigned a value to it then offered to trade it for his mother's life. Since he wasn't precisely aware of its existence, he didn't know exactly where it resided in his body. Removal from certain sensitive parts made him nervous.

As if reading his mind, she smiled again then laughed as she shook her head.

"Don't worry, Dean," she replied. "You won't feel a thing. Now, because you're new to this and only recently of age, I'm not taking payment upfront. In fact, seeing as you're not even doing this for yourself even, I'll give you my most generous offer. I'll give you 10 years."

"Ten years?" Dean repeated skeptically. "What's 10 years of what? You said my mother would die when she was old. She's not going to be old in 10 years."

"You are just too cute," she giggled. "I could just nibble you right now. Dean, your Mom will get another 50 years easy. What I'm saying is that you don't need to pay for me another decade. Ten years from this very night, I'll come and collect your soul—regardless of what shape it's in. No change in terms. No change in benefits. So, until we meet again, do whatever you like with it. Slut around and tarnish it up by nailing every sweet thing with long legs and beautiful eyes that comes along. Or keep it starchy clean and drag it to church on Sundays if that's what makes you tingle in those naughty sweet spots of yours. After all, it's yours—for now anyway."

"So in 10 years I have to be right here to pay you?" he asked. "What if I forget?"

"Don't you worry about that," she shook her head. "You won't need to find me. I'll find you. Ten years from tonight, I'll catch up with you—it's one of my special tricks. Who knows, by then you might just be too much for me to resist; I might just have to come see you a day early so we can have a little fun. Until then, all you have to do is live your life, Dean. Enjoy yourself. Spend time with your Mom and the rest of your family. Does that sound fair?"

"It sounds easy," Dean replied and felt anything but that in his stomach.

He chewed on his lip. He looked over his shoulder at the car where Chuck was still slumped with his mouth open leaning against the driver's door. Not that Dean usually asked his pal for advice, but this did seem like a moment when a little conference with someone might be helpful. He looked further down the road, to the small glint of light over that shone on the sign for Singer's Salvage Yard.

"Thinking about asking Bobby's opinion?" she said with a sneer. "You can jog the two miles to his place to see if he's around, but I'm not certain I'll be here when you get back. Then again, your Mom might not be there even if you do get back here before I go. See, that would be a problem. Curing the sick, I can do. Raising the dead? Not so much."

"What's the catch?" he asked abruptly. Again, odd lessons from Phelp's extra credit/torture came to mind—specifically (and oddly) deals struck with tyrants over the years that were supposed to avoid war but usually led right to it all the same. "I can't see where my soul is worth much of anything, but you're here promising to give me something that all of the money in the world can't buy. There's no such thing as an 'everybody wins proposition' so what aren't you telling me?"

She raised her eyebrows and was mildly impressed. The prophesy, the one everyone gave up on ages ago, had never mentioned that the Righteous Man who made the deal be a man-child nor that he would be clever. Granted, prophesies were not always detailed or accurate, but the few times Hell made a deal with someone looking to be self-sacrificing on someone else's behalf, that person always turned out to be all Play-Dough between the ears. This kid wasn't exactly breaking the bank on critical thinking that night, but his doubts were enough to put this transaction in jeopardy.

"What do you mean?" she repeated.

"I'm just wondering if this is such a great bargain, then why is what you do so secret and have such a bad rep?" he asked with an aggressive edge to his voice as he stepped back from her. "Bobby's journal only had dark and nasty stuff in it. That's how I summoned you. So…"

"Cupcake, considering how old I really am, you are total jailbait, but the fact you didn't try and wow me with the word 'ergo' just now got me hot in a way home never can," she grinned then suddenly folded her arms and affected a superior air as all airs of flirting vanished. "I'll let you in on the real secret: you just busted me. Yep, you got us. You figured it out. That whole taboo thing about selling your soul, that's just my office's PR. Look, if we gave everyone what they wanted whenever they called us, no one would try to accomplish anything on their own. You'd be a race of lazy, greedy, worthless asses all driving around in new cars with no incentive to try to do anything for yourselves. And us? We'd be burned out, miserable and hating life—hating all of you, too. So, to keep the wheels turning, help the friendships survive and save ourselves from all of you, we created a pretty convincing cover story. Ages ago, my bosses put the word out that it's a dark and dangerous thing to sell your soul. We did it for selfish reasons, Dean: our survival. Nowadays, business is manageable because we have rules. We're the go-to team when the cause is worthy, but we also get our space and relaxation time, too."

Dean nodded as he listened to the explanation. It sounded reasonable and logical—something bad and evil stuff shouldn't be. Then again, he reminded himself, saving his mother wasn't a bad thing. That too was logical and reasonable in his mind.

"So what are these rules?" he asked cautiously.

"There are just three," the demon said plainly. "Rule one: Caveat emptor. That's Latin—most of our stuff is so old that it's all in Latin—and it means let the buyer beware. Basically, that means you make sure you know what you're getting when you ask. You, Dean Winchester, seem to know precisely what you want and how you want it. That is good business. Rule one, check. Rule two: All deals are final. So if you change your mind a few weeks down the road and you want your Mom to die, don't expect me to show up and put the cancer back."

"What?" Dean choked on the mere thought of that. "I would never…"

"Good," she grinned quickly. "Then we have agreement on rule two. Check. Finally, the big one: We only makes deals with those who are worthy."

Worthy was one of those words that worried Dean. That was a judgmental word, one that people held over you and used to measure you. Dean knew he usually didn't measure up when it came to those moments, but this wasn't about him, he reminded himself.

"You think my Mom's worthy?" he asked in a small, hopeful but fear-filled voice.

"This isn't about her, Dean," she said in a kind tone as she reach forward and gently grabbed his hand. "This deal is yours. I can say without hesitation that you're more worthy than you apparently know."

Dean marveled at that. He'd never been told he was worthy of much, unless he counted when Principal Carlson said he was worthy of a permanent seat in detention. A few teachers suggested that he might be worthy of a place in the state penitentiary, but those were usually whispered when they thought he was out of earshot. Oddly, the one who usually defended him from those twits was the one who put him in detention, Mr. Phelps. However, his history teacher's opinion wasn't relevant at that moment.

"Now, I don't want to rush you, but I get the feeling you're cutting things a little close here," the demon nudged him. "So, are you ready to make a deal?"

Dean felt his pulse race and his heart shiver (or was that his soul, he wondered). He took a deep yet shaky breath then nodded.

"I guess," he replied. "What now? Do I have to sign something?"

"Oh, it's easier than that, Handsome," she replied as she draped her arms over his shoulder and pulled him close. "Where do you think the phrase sealed with a kiss comes from?"

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _A/N:_** More to come.


	8. Chapter 8

**_Note:_** _So here is the final chapter (at least of this story). This one came together fast and feels a bit like the middle act of a play—and it should. This is setting up the rest of the series. Thanks to those of you who posted reviews. I appreciate them._

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 _Singer's Salvage Yard_

 _August_

Bobby cruised into his yard, pulling his battered and leprous 1977 Chevelle SS behind his ramshackle home. He was shaking his head as the sounds of the high-pitched shrieking, a woman's shrill scream, from a few moments ago still echoed in his mind.

Things were loud down the road that hot, humid morning. A cranky neighbor, and yeah that fit Bobby's description on a lot of ways, might have minded having a few rambunctious kids wreaking havoc and raising hell next door. He might have dreaded the occasions when he had to drop by to talk to the adjacent property owners, but these were the Winchesters and those kind of rules and expectations didn't fit.

The screams had greeted him as he pulled into their driveway and spied a thin and pale woman with close cropped blond hair running for all she was worth away from a stream of water being wielded a 12-year-old with a determine expression only to find herself ensnared the firm yet gentle hold of a 16-year-old laughing manically while ignoring her commands to release her.

Mary Winchester really should have known better, Bobby thought as he smiled recalling the sight to the woman, dripping and mildly furious, attempting to scold her children. School vacation was nearly over and the boys were getting their last licks of fun out. That a few of those included turning their chore of washing the car into soaking their mother and the laundry she was attempting to hang on the line was a fairly obvious oversight on her part, Bobby figured.

He sat in his car pondering the twists and turns of good fortune that had visited his extended family that summer. His boys were smiling again, being rotten little brats also, but being young boys just blowing off steam, aggravating their mother and behaving like kids whose only concern was the swiftly approaching first day of school.

And Mary, there was another sight that brought a smile to Bobby's scraggly face—the fact she was around at all was a reason to rejoice; that she was still getting better and looking healthier each week was cause for being ecstatic. Just two months prior, the woman was at death's door and about to breathe her last when she opened her eyes and awoke from her coma. It took another couple weeks of treatments and hospital care, but she was eventually released when tests revealed that the tumors that had riddled her body were shrinking and (in some instances) had disappeared altogether. Doctors were calling it a spontaneous remissions and declaring it was as scientifically explainable as it was surprising. Bobby had read up on this sort of thing and found there was enough scientifically documented cases of this happening to others to let him sleep at night.

But only just.

What bothered him was the timing of it. The very night he expected John to call with news that the woman was gone she had instead awakened and asked to see her children. John held off until the next morning, shuttling the boys to her room briefly to see her. Both seemed unsurprised in Bobby's estimation to see their mother awake and lucid. He attributed Dean's reaction to his stubborn refusal to accept that his mother was at her end. It was a raging case of denial, but so far it didn't need to be corrected.

It was Sam's reaction that struck Bobby most. The kid had smiled… knowingly. He had walked into that room with a wide grin and an air of such confidence that Bobby couldn't help but wonder if maybe the brat's whispered words to the Almighty had been heard.

And that's what was bothering the old hunter.

Science explanations aside, Mary's recovery still had a bit of a miraculous aura around it in his estimation. It had Bobby wondering, pondering and questioning. He knew there was only one place he might find some answers.

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

The flare from the flashpot was blinding, but Bobby instantly felt the presence in the room. There was a tingling sensation (not all together unpleasant) in his spine and (disturbingly) in his nether regions. He subtly shook off the feeling as his eyes rapidly began to adjust to the light. A short figure appeared in his vision sporting a grin that was both arrogant and inviting.

"Hidey Ho, Neighboroo," said 'James Smith,' the human vessel for the Archangel Gabriel beamed at him. "What's with flashing the Bat Signal? I thought we talked about this being a ' _don't call me, I'll call you_ ' kind of relationship? You're not getting clingy on me, are you? I guess letting you down easy before didn't make my point. Now, I'll have to be blunt: I'm just not that into you."

Bobby scowled at the self-important winged conman. The hunter still didn't quite have a handle on his supernatural adjacent property owner. On one hand, he stole the Winchester boys from their beds and essentially hid them from their family for a decade. On the other, he had dropped the occasional bread crumb of a detail that had kept them safe since their return (and Bobby suspected his invisible hand in that little caper as well).

"Mary Winchester," Bobby said without preamble.

"Uh, no," the angel grinned as he tapped his temple. "I see that senility and cirrhosis setting in early into your old casaba, eh Bob? I'm not Mary anyone. I'm Jimbo, your old pal, Mr. Smith Goes to South Dakota, one of the original G-men."

Bobby scoffed at the blather but kept his tempter in check as he reminded himself that, despite his diminutive size, this guy could smite with a sneeze.

"I mean do I need to thank you for them, the Winchesters," Bobby replied. "I'm talking about Mary's cancer. It's took an about face and marched its malignant ass out the door. Did you do that?"

Gabriel eyed the hunter carefully and tried not to let his lack of information (and how much that worried him) show. Bobby was a smart man despite his outward appearance. Hunters were not known for being Rhodes Scholars by nature—or so Gabriel learned when he rubbed elbows with the snotty Men of Letters crowd half a century earlier. Bobby Singer was different; he was scholarly in a back-woodsy kind of way. Despite looking like an extra in Deliverance, Bobby certainly was quicker on the uptake than any other hunter the angel ever encountered. For example, he was the first human ever to figure out what the angel was. After a couple millennia in virtually impenetrable celestial witness protection, that was pretty substantial streak to break, and it made the angel respect the man… a bit.

"No," Gabriel admitted. "Wasn't me."

"One of your frat brothers?" Bobby wondered, not sure if a positive answer was a good thing in this context or not.

"Not as far as I know," the angel shook his head. "Mr. Personality himself, John Winchester, mentioned it when he let me know my rent check was going to be late… again. He told me all about the astounding recovery underway. Since then, I've been tuned into angel radio a bit. Haven't heard a word about any sanctioned miracles."

Bobby nodded and huffed loudly as the next option came to mind.

"What about the unsanctioned kind?" he wondered.

"We don't do those," Gabriel shook his head. "That's the opposition's gig."

"The opposition?" Bobby repeated as he narrowed his eyes. "Demons? They ain't known for helping people and saving lives generally. I'm more apt to believe they gave her the disease than I am that they took it away."

"Yeah, not really a good deed crowd," Gabriel agreed. "Of course, there's a couple reasons they might step in. Maybe keeping her around helps them out somehow or maybe it screws someone else over—which is kind of the same thing with my brother Lucifer's ill-trained pets. Then again, maybe we're overthinking this. Maybe her cure wasn't supernatural at all—just a fluke, a real science thing. You humans, you're a mess inside: a lot of cells and coding, bugs in all the mechanics; you never know when something's going to turn on or off. I swear sometimes it seems like dear old Dad made you all the original version of Windows."

Bobby's face scrunched tightly. It was a constipated expression that said one of the conversationalists was full of shit only he wasn't sure which. The angel smiled superiorly as he diagnosed the problem and the source of the confusion.

"I'm saying you're like that new computer operating system that's eventually going to pretty much own your asses," the angel explained. "Sometimes, you have to suddenly turn it off then back on again for no apparent reason in order for it to work. Seriously, any of this ringing what's left for bells in that crusty head of yours? Bill Gates exists in this reality, right? You've at least heard of Windows 95, haven't you?"

Bobby's expression grew flat and unyielding again. It was his impatient look, one that would make most grown adult men seek cover or simple walk away quickly. However, it wasn't going to get a rise out of an archangel. In fact, he grinned at it. Yet again he had dropped a little nugget of future information on the guy (something that could be used and exploited for personal gain if he was that kind of creature) but Bobby refused the bait. It was a little childish, Gabriel knew, but one of his alter egos was that of the Trickster. If he didn't give folks enough rope to hang themselves, he might get a reputation as a softee. Bobby Singer was just good at not falling for those traps making the angel suspect that had the hunter lived five hundred years earlier, he'd have been a grizzly bearded saint (likely burned at the stake of his successful alchemy).

Rather than drop that compliment on him, Gabriel scoffed and looked around the humble and dilapidated abode as he turned up his nose.

"Right, Win 95, who am I kidding?" Gabriel remarked. "You've never even heard of window cleaner by the looks of this place. Cleanliness, godliness, ring any bells? My brothers and I have done miracles in a stable, but this place might make us change our minds."

Bobby ignored the first part of the jab and went straight at the bit of imparted information that meant something to him.

"Hold on," he objected. "You told me once that angels are the ushers of destiny, that there is no random in this world. If that's true, why can't you explain this?"

The angel sighed, seeing the little flaw in his plan of dropping in (on command), saying little to nothing and flitting out before he ended up on heaven's radar for surely someone upstairs had taken notice that Mary Winchester wasn't knocking on heaven's door.

However, the answer to Bobby's question was elusive, event to the archangel. He had theories—none of which were good, but that didn't make them facts. Frankly, he wasn't even sure he should be tuning into this little North American soap opera anymore. It was supposed to be total Snoozeville now that the big prize fight was off and there wasn't going to be a Seraph casting call for Look Whose Coming to the Apocalypse.

But there was just something about the Winchester family that Gabriel couldn't leave alone.

Alone.

That, he knew, was the real key. He was alone, cut off from his own family, faking it with the many difference guises and false identities he took on to stay hidden. Then he met those two boys, brothers, with a bond as strong (hell, probably stronger from what he had seen thus far) than that which he himself had with his own brothers. And, despite their in-fighting, power struggles, unfortunate incarcerations and bitching, Gabriel still missed Michael and Lucifer greatly. Each time the archangel took a peek at the Winchesters, he felt a little closer to home, to his own family. These boys were supposed to be his brothers' vessels, the ones who were going to end the family feud once and for all.

That is until Gabriel stepped in. It was selfish to do so really. Being cut off from his brothers and lonely was one thing. Letting Michael and Lucifer fight each other to the death was not something Gabriel (essentially the middle child and peacemaker) could do. So he did the next best thing. He removed their ability to face each other by not letting the prophesy come to fruition. No demon blood to taint the vessel for Lucifer; without that, there was no need for the Righteous Man.

"Well, that whole fate and destine gig seems to be on the cutting room floor," he shrugged as he looked at Bobby with an earnest expression. "Things have changed a bit since I left. You know how wars can shake up things. Dad's been vacationing and getting in a little Me time for bit so who knows what's going on at home."

"So this remission is a coincidence?" Bobby demanded as he gestured to the instruments on the table beside him. "Keep in mind that I don't believe in 'em as a rule. Oh, and I've got a squirt gun of holy oil and a blowtorch aimed at your dangling bits."

"Flirt," Gabriel grinned then winked his lack of fear. "Okay, remember last year when I told you I'd done a little _Where's Waldo_ deal by putting the Winchester brats on an extended vacation from their family all those years ago? Well, that destiny thing I was detouring was kind of a big deal—like the main feature in our big script. So, if you knock over one domino out of order thus changing the way the whole thing operates, sometimes a few other dominos topple in a direction you weren't expecting."

Bobby considered the information as he began to nod slowly and reluctantly.

"So you're saying that this could actually be a good thing—just like it appears?" he asked. "It's possible this is an unintentional outcome that for once doesn't screw good people?"

Gabriel shrugged as his expression let it be known his guess was as good as anyone's.

"It's possible," he replied. "It's not usually likely, but unlikely and impossible ain't the same thing, Roberto. From my read of the landscape, the Winchester family is so irrelevant to the big picture now that it's probably not worth killing any of them right now. It could be that heaven canceled their early check-in reservations and figured they would be less trouble just leaving them down here. I mean, have you seen the way those two kids behave? Heaven's a nice place, generally. Boys like Frick and Frack are why we have to hide our nice things. I'm probably not the only one who was worried they'd turn our lovely knoll in The Garden into a Slip-N-Slide."

Bobby snorted, not so much at the sentiment as at the visual the statement gave him. He wouldn't put it past the Winchester boys to do something like that. It would start innocently enough, as most of their antics did, usually when Sam wanting to do something. That would lead to Dean coming up with some outlandish way to get Sam want he wanted. Turning some tranquil heavenly garden into a first warm day of spring free-for-all was not outside the boys' repertoire.

Still, that didn't seem quite like enough reason to keep Mary around when she was literally hours away from her plot in the ground.

"You believe that's the reason for all this?" he asked sternly but with a heartfelt expression.

Gabriel shrugged as he sighed.

"I'm an angel," he replied. "Faith is my kind of my gig. Dad sort of required it when he built us—part of the original operating system, if you catch my drift."

"That's not an answer," Bobby persisted.

"I'm telling you I don't know and if I don't know it, then we are off script and anything can happen," Gabriel said.

He suspected that the anything possibility was not a good one. There was something about Mary's recovery that bothered him—like the fact it happened at all. That was why he was keeping an ear out for any chatter on what the God Squad was going to do. If they felt taking Mary Winchester was a moral imperative, they would do it. If they did that, then they would find the boys—Enochian invisibility cloaks etched into the ribs or not. Then again, if they were expecting her to die in 1983, they had done nothing to see that to fruition in the 12 years since. In truth, none of it made sense to him, which could only mean one thing: chaos.

Angels and heaven liked order. It was the downstairs neighbors who liked the opposite. And that, he realized, was the answer he didn't want to contemplate. There was a chance that someone had saved Mary and used the powers of Hell to do it. Maybe. Ignorance, Gabriel felt in this instance, was bliss. So who might have done something naughty was remained a mystery to him and he wasn't willing to find out.

If pushed, he would have said he suspected John. The guy had the knowledge from his forays into hunting and was just gruff enough to think he could fight his way out of deal. For the family's sake, he hoped that was the case because, despite all of John's virtue, he wasn't The Righteous Man. No, that title would always be his son's and his son's only. So, as long as Dean remained ignorance of the evil and creepy crowd, his very valuable and much coveted soul would be kept save from taking up residence Hell, and everything would be fine.

"I know you want a better answer than ' _I don't know_ ,' but that's all I've got for you," Gabriel continued. "When anything can happen, well, anything can happen. When this whole blue ball started rolling around the universe and getting populated by all that begetting you all do so well, there was a plan. I sort of stole the sides rewrote Act Three—for the good of everyone. What does that mean for all of you now? I don't know. Maybe it leads us back to Act One so we can start over without any of the crap that was coming down the pike. Maybe this is a sign. Check your notes, Bob. When's the only time the Bible states that things here were good?"

The hunter/junkman paused as he stared flatly at the nodding angel in front of him. When Bobby answered, his tone was firm yet skeptical. He quoted the first line of that holy book with a hint of dread and bucket full of uncertainty: "In the beginning."

 ** _oOoOoOo_**

 ** _A/N:_** If there is sufficient readership interest in continuing this AU, the next story will be "IN THE DARK." For the immediate future, I will be finishing my 3rd original novel so that it is ready for publication by the time sit down with some of the producers and a former cast member of "Supernatural" in early 2016 for a little meet and greet.


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